Engineering Productivity
- Deployment frequency
- Change lead time
- Failed deployment recovery time
- Change fail rate
- Deployment rework rate
- Flow state
- Feedback loops
- Cognitive load
- Satisfaction & wellbeing
- Performance
- Activity
- Communication & collaboration
- Efficiency & flow
DORA, DevEx, and SPACE are complementary lenses rather than interchangeable metric sets or literal overlapping sets. DORA reads delivery through the current five metrics: change lead time, deployment frequency, failed deployment recovery time, change fail rate, and deployment rework rate.
DevEx examines feedback loops, cognitive load, and flow state. SPACE adds Satisfaction and well-being, Performance, Activity, Communication and collaboration, and Efficiency and flow. No single lens answers whether a team is productive.
Goal → Signal → Metric helps teams choose measures rather than merely sort existing ones. Goodhart's law means that when a metric becomes a target, it stops being a reliable measure, so validate proxies against outcomes and the context supplied by the other lenses.
Start with a goal: define Goal → Signal → Metric instead of selecting a convenient dashboard counter.
Cross-check the system through DORA, DevEx, and SPACE, and label proxies versus outcomes.
When a metric becomes a target, validate it with other signals and all three lenses.