Commits

Owned by Shir Koretski
Dec 20, 2024
3 min read

Tracking Team Work Output

Overview
The Commits metric is a volume-based measure that helps you understand your team’s work output. While this metric doesn’t capture every aspect of a developer's activity, it provides valuable insights into productivity, engagement, and potential issues that may indicate struggling team members.

What Does This Metric Measure?

The Commits metric tracks the quantity and frequency of code commits made by your development team within a specific timeframe. It reflects the level of activity and collaboration within the team, offering insights into:

  • Development pace

  • Team engagement

  • Project progress and velocity

Monitoring commit volume allows you to identify patterns in productivity, detect fluctuations in activity, and gauge the overall health of the project.

How Is This Metric Calculated?

Commits are calculated by counting the number of commits made within a specified timeframe. This involves:

  1. Retrieving commit logs: The system retrieves the commit logs from the version control system (e.g., Git).

  2. Tallying individual commits: It counts the total number of commits made during the defined period (which can be customized to suit the team or project).

The timeframe can be adjusted depending on the team’s needs, but it is often set to daily, weekly, or sprint intervals.

What Questions Can I Answer from This Data?

The Commits metric helps answer key questions related to team productivity and development practices:

  1. How is my team’s commit volume changing over time?
    Monitor trends in commit frequency to understand if there are fluctuations in activity. A decrease in commits could signal potential issues or bottlenecks.

  2. Is my team creating larger or smaller commits?
    Understand whether the commits are becoming more granular or large. This can indicate the team’s approach to work breakdown and code quality.

  3. How often does my team commit code?
    Track how frequently your team is committing code. Infrequent commits could point to issues like poor development practices or lack of collaboration.

What Should I Take Away from This Data?

  1. Irregular Commit Volume
    An irregular commit volume can signal poor developer hygiene or inconsistent work patterns. Best practices include making frequent, granular commits to ensure iterative, manageable units of work. This approach also helps keep the codebase more maintainable.

  2. Infrequent Commits
    Infrequent commits (e.g., commits made less than once a day) are usually a sign of poor development practices. Daily commits are the standard best practice, helping to:

    • Maintain better sync with the main codebase

    • Promote more iterative, manageable units of work

    • Reduce the risk of conflicts during integration

  3. Large Commits
    Large commits are often harder to review and can create integration challenges. These commits typically encompass multiple changes and features, making them difficult to manage in code reviews and increase the risk of bugs. The best practice is to:

    • Create smaller, frequent commits that are easier to review and integrate into the main branch.

    • Maintain focus on iterative development rather than big, monolithic changes.

Conclusion

The Commits metric provides valuable insight into the productivity and collaboration within your development team. Regularly monitoring commit volume, size, and frequency allows you to identify potential issues like poor commit hygiene, slow progress, or challenges with collaboration. Encouraging smaller, frequent commits aligned with best practices will help improve code quality, speed up code reviews, and ensure smoother integration of changes.