1 Developers have opinions too! Understanding developer resistance to software metrics

There is plenty of good advice available on best practices and enablers of successful measurement programs. Planners and implementers of these programs, however, continue to grapple with push back from developers. This resistance often stems from developers ’ distrust of the metrics process and a lack of belief that metrics will be useful, amongst other factors. To help organizations pin-point the problems they are likely to encounter in getting buy-in from their developers, we compiled a diagnostic survey that gathers opinions and attitudes directly from developers. The survey, and underlying framework, is based on problem areas identified in metrics and process acceptance literature. To evaluate the effect of these problem areas on developer motivation, we applied our survey to 98 metrics practitioners. We learned that four factors: metrics usefulness, fear of adverse consequences, expectations of managers and colleagues, and attitude towards metrics were significantly related to the motivation to collect metrics data