I don't think there is one specific metric. It seems like SVN commits would be more accurate than LOC, but when I hear numbers like that, I begin to seriously doubt it. You have to take a lot of things into consideration when trying to measure "forward progress".
In theory all of our commits are approximately one feature, and I can't, for the life of me, imagine finishing 100 features in 2 days (even split between all three of my team). Clearly there's some disconnect between what different people consider to be a feature.
For the record, we've made a little over 1000 commits in the last five and a half months. I certainly don't think that makes us 20 times less productive.
Re:Diary of a Failed Startup
by curiousgeorge on Wednesday June 25, 2008 @04:40AM
(#227316)
Good measure of how on-page the team is though.
It bothers me when developers aren't working on hard problems and fail to make frequent commits. They are used to working in isolation and without scrutiny. Unless people are actively breaking things they should be updating.
The nice thing about svn commits is that if you're doing atomic commits (and both organizations were, though I got a little sloppy about it with GameClay), 1 commit ~= 1 feature. There're still issues about what you consider a feature - if you do a feature right the first time and then check it in, is that better than if you check in a barely-working rough cut, then a couple UI enhancements, then some bugfixes for things you should've gotten right the first time? But those issues would crop up no matter how you try to measure forward progress.