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Release notes September 2021

NEW (kick-ass) DEVELOPER SCORECARD

Run-through

pull requests and code reviews

Pull Requests And Code Reviews

September 28, 2022 No Comments

There are two words that will help open a lot of doors in life. Push and Pull. Here, we’re going to talk about Pull Requests. Pull requests have since become a standard part of the software development process and are closely associated with code reviews. Code reviews involve teamwork and collaboration on code and serve as one of the four main drivers of software development, alongside speed, quality, and efficiency.

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By Gitential Team

After many intense brainstorming sessions, days of implementing, testing and improving, we can finally present it to you: the Amazing, highly detailed, super insightful Developer Scorecard! Get to know your developers, this time for real, including their performance metrics and work patterns.

As we mentioned, it is detailed, but also, it gives you context. Right now, there’s not only one perspective of your developer’s work, but three independent points of view! Finally, you’ll be able to quickly answer questions like:

  • Is this developer doing fine in general?
  • Is Loren the strongest player on this project?
  • Or maybe Carter’s slowing down the team?

And these are just for the beginning! You already get the big picture, right? So let’s dig deeper into that so you can get familiar with some helpful details.

Workspace, Project and Team baselines

You might be wondering “How will I know on which level I’m checking this developer?”.
The comparing values will tell you exactly on which level you’re comparing them.

Level 1. Workspace - general overview

How to get there? Here’s the path:

  1. Pick a workspace
  2. Dashboard view
  3. Developers tab
  4. Click on the developer’s name
  5. You’re in the Developer’s Scorecard

This is what the top of the page will look like:

If you take a closer look at the metrics tiles, you’ll notice that the results and comparisons are reflected based on the workspace average. Voila! That’s your first level of Developer Scorecard insights.

Level 2. Project - more specific workflow and requirements

How to get there?

  1. Pick a workspace
  2. Go to Projects on the left side menu and choose a project
  3. Go to Developers tab
  4. Pick a developer’s name from the table and click
  5. You’re in the Developer’s Scorecard

As you can probably notice, the charts look very similar. But, the numbers represented are different! That’s because they were calculated on different baselines, according to the project’s context and overall results.

Again, to make sure what kind of developer’s scorecard you’re checking, just take a look at the tiles summary. Here it specifies the project average.

Level 3. Team-specific environment

How to get there?

  1. Pick a workspace
  2. Go to Teams on the left side menu and choose a team
  3. Go to Developers tab
  4. Pick the developer’s name from the table and click on it
  5. You’re in Developer’s Scorecard of the team level

This time there are no surprises here – the charts look very similar again.

But if we take a closer look at the metrics we can see it’s about the team’s average results.

So just to sum up: Please remember that some charts might look very similar, but even in a case when the main metrics values might be the same, the comparison values and the charts’ trends are different. The calculation baseline is different in each case depending on where exactly you click on the developer’s name.

Charts tour

Let us quickly walk you through the new charts!

Number of Active Days

Sum of days when a developer has committed, created, or reviewed a PR within the selected period.

Coding hours

Total estimated hours spent on writing code within a selected time frame.

Number of Commits

Number of commits authored by the developer within the selected timeframe.

Utilization

Ratio of developer’s coding time and work time on the current project.

Code Volume

A.K.A. Contribution. Total of lines inserted and 20% of lines deleted in a commit.

Efficiency

Percentage of productive lines of code (which didn’t need any rewrite within last 3 weeks) vs. the total implementation lines.

Number of PRs Created

The number of Pull Requests created by the developer within a selected timeframe.

Total Number of Reviews

The number of review comments by the given developer.

Average PR Cycle Time (days)

Average Pull Request Cycle Time in the selected period.

Allocation by Work Type

Based on some predefined patterns we try to categorize development work into these categories. There’s always some overlap between them.

Our team members can work on a lot of things. Based on their strengths and weaknesses in each work type, you can help them to work more efficiently with the right task allocation.

There are 6 work types that we differentiate between:

  1. Help Others: Any lines of code implemented which was originally created in the last 3 weeks by someone else
  2. Churn: Unproductive lines of code. Amount of lines of code which developer had to rewrite in his code in the last 3 weeks
  3. Test: Automated test lines implementation without any code rewrite (churn) or helping other activities.
  4. Bug fixes: Lines of code implemented to fix bugs excluding the ones already recognized in the contributions as “help others” or “churn.
  5. New Code: Lines of codes implemented as new code in the solution which are not bugs and without any code rewrite or helping other activities.
  6. Legacy Refactor: Lines of code implemented as rewriting old code in the solution, excluding the ones already recognized in the contributions as helping others, bug fixing, or “churn.

Allocation by Technology

Counts all the contributions from a given developer and uses the technology for categorization.

PR Cycle time by Activity

Calculated from all the PRs created by the developer in the given time interval. We have the avg cycle time as 100% and we divide this into three parts by calculating all the average times spent on each step (development, pickup, or review).

Pull Request Activity

A new table was added to the Dev Scorecard and Deep Dive views: Pull Request Activity. It’s the same concept we have with the Commit Activity: all the metrics based on pull request data are a separate column in the table.

Other upgrades

New Show Pull Requests and Show Commits views

You can find various places in the application with the “Show commits” or “Show pull requests” link. By clicking on the link you can view a list of all the matching PRs and commits used in that context.

Manage Developers - New column with logins and manual adjusting

  • During a project refresh, we have a deduplication algorithm to match git authors with provider usernames.
  • If the initial algorithm came up with wrong matches you can manually assign the usernames to the right developers, by using the Logins column in the table.
  • Logins are working the same way as email addresses: One login name can be assigned to one developer. If you assign a login name to a new developer, Gitential will automatically remove the login from the previous developer.

Manage Collaborators - New member invitation flow and view

We’ve made the invitation system more clear and easier to understand:

  • The invited user must accept the invitation by clicking the link in the email
  • Any email address can be used, you can invite everyone, not just already registered users for collaboration
  • There is a separate list of pending invitations. You can cancel an invitation before it is accepted.
  • After the invitation is accepted you can remove the access by deleting the membership in the second list.

Deep Dive - Added Pull Request Activity table

Now you can go into the details on your developer’s pull requests activity for a better overview of the development lifecycle than tracking single commit-based activities.

Better navigation with clickable breadcrumbs

No need to click the “back” button in the browser anymore! In case you dig deeper in your projects or teams, you can go back by as many levels as you need.

Scorecard Recap

The scorecard feature aims to provide you with a detailed overview at a glance of how each of your developers are doing generally – and in relation to their team and project. If one of their metrics seems amiss, you can easily dive deeper to help determine why.

This update also enhances the details of your pull request and commit activity, while making it easier to manage developers and collaborators. Last, but not least, you should also find it easier and faster to navigate from section to section without having to hit the “back” link on your browser. It’s a small, but significant step forward!

If you read our Benchmarking review comparing Pluralsight Flow and Gitential, you may have picked up on something else that we are working on – we will soon be adding industry benchmarking, too. This will provide you a fourth view allowing you to compare developer performance to industry standards.

There’s much more to come – some exciting things are in the works that we aim to announce before the end of 2021. We’d love to hear your feedback on the Developer Scorecard and recent enhancements. Do they work better for you now? Are there any changes you’d like to see? Please let us know!

About Gitential

Gitential is an Analytics and Engineering Intelligence service provider bringing visibility and optimization highlights on teams’ productivity. Our mission is to enable faster, data-driven decisions to continuously improve software delivery team cost performance and proactive risk management.

Ready to explore different ways to improve your software projects’ efficiency? Schedule a meeting and we will be happy to listen to and discuss your needs.

Have a project but are not quite ready to contact us? See if Gitential is a fit for you!

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  • 874 Walker Rd Suite C., Dover, 19904, DE, USA
  • info@gitential.com
  • (650) 680 7697

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Gitential.com Inc.

  • 874 Walker Rd Suite C., Dover, 19904, DE, USA
  • info@gitential.com
  • (650) 680 7697

Resources

Legal

Copyright © 2021 Gitential.com, Inc. All rights reserved
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