User:AKlapper (WMF)/Metrics thoughts

General random personal thoughts on software contribution metrics


 * lamppost fallacy: looking only for metrics that are easy to measure, quantifiable. But also need qualitative as it's complementary.
 * If commit numbers in Git decreased: Are there maybe more squashed commits lately (locally merged several patches into one)?
 * If we have less developers, do we also have less commits?
 * Backlog of open changesets needs looking in context (ratio), like also number of committed changesets per month too.
 * T150510 on "Average Time Open in Days Per Changeset", survivor bias. (Plus data includes bots like L10N-bot, hence not useful at all?)

Bitergia definitions:
 * Review Efficiency Index (REI), measured as the number of closed changesets out of the new ones in a given period.
 * Time To Merge (TTM), measured as the time since a review is submitted until this is closed.

Links

 * http://community.redhat.com/blog/2014/07/when-metrics-go-wrong/
 * https://www.slideshare.net/nearyd/metrics-gone-bad
 * https://opensource.com/business/16/9/choosing-right-metrics
 * https://chaoss.community/ (Community Health Analytics Open Source Software)