IBM now grades developers on their coding skills, what about your company?
Tags :IBM development scoring
In a recent article written by Network World, it highlights how IBM has started grading the developers that write the code that drives the products.
Using the Cast platform, IBM managers can analyze how a developer pieces code together, for instance, and make a quantitative determination of the developer's abilities. The system can review the code's performance, security and technical depth -- gauging, for instance, whether the code going to have a lower cost of maintenance in the long term."If you're writing something in Java, is the code itself structured in a manner that is compliant with what is recognized as an industry best practice? That's the type of science that Cast helps produce," Howard says.
So with this tool, IBM can now rate and score each developer on the same scale. Which brings a question to mind. Is it the amount of code that a developer writes that meets criteria, or awesome code never before seen at a slower pace that is seen as a higher score? What if a develpoer writes code that doesn't meet industry best practices because it is revolutionary? How is this proven?
Taking the time to identify IBM's top software developers wasn't easy. Nor was it easy to figure out if all of its developers were fully utilized
So somewhere there is now a list of "top" developers. Does your company have this type of list that everyone can see? I only mention the ability to see it from another comment in the article:
By defining sets of outcomes, or measures, that everyone in IBM's software development community (and its HR reps) could agree on, the Cast system makes it possible to quantify performance. "Essentially it permitted our people to walk around with a scorecard. They could begin to earn points, based on the results or the value they were driving for the business," Howard says.
With IBM's new system, reputation becomes something tangible. "Somebody can enhance their reputation within the community based on results that they're delivering."
So tell me what you think in the comments, Twitter, Google Plus or whatever suits your fancy this week.
Read the entire article here
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On Monday, November 14th, 2011 by Chris Miller
