Unable to find a proper tool to measure the 4 Key Metrics

Accelerate: The Science of Lean Software and DevOps by Nicole Forsgren, Jez Humble, and Gene Kim, was published in 2018.

A lot of good things have been already been said about the impact of this book in the software industry, yet sometimes I missed a tool that helps me, my team, or my organization to embrace the continuous improvement mindset guided by metrics.

OSS Alternatives

I found at least 2 promising OSS projects:

• thoughtworks/metrik: They have a good starting point, but how they measure the 4 Key Metrics looks inaccurate to me since they extract all of them from the Continuous Integration System. Being guided by these metrics can harm how the teams improve the metrics when the team seniority on the 4 Key Metrics is low.

• GoogleCloudPlatform/fourkeys: Probably the OSS project which is more advanced, but coupled to GCP 🤷‍

I still didn’t find a good experience by using them and they are coupled to a company instead of a community.

Closed Source Alternatives

There are at least 5 close source products, which means exists the need for products to monitor the 4 Key Metrics to help the team improve their performance. 👏

The main aspect I’m looking for is if the products compare team members or teams between them. Management comparison is harmful to individual and team performance since that data can be used for performance reviews and it might impact psychological safety. A root aspect of the product that goes against Accelerate mindset.

I discarded directly those products. It comes down to two products:

• Haystack

• Sleuth

What I can see between those two products is that Sleuth takes one step more not only collects the information and presents it in a comprehensible way, as Haystack as well, but provides actionable feedback.

What am I missing?

A community around the 4 Key Metrics, aiming to improve collaboratively and helping each other in an Open Source style, sharing our learnings on how each team and organization are measuring the 4KM, how they are organized to improve on them and share the learnings with other community members.

Why 4keymetrics.dev?

Each time I speak with 4 key metrics practitioners, they miss this tool as well. They researched which tool is best, and in the end, they dropped the idea of adopting one of the existing tools in the market, yet the reason might differ for each of us.

I start the 4keymetrics.dev tool as a community-driven product with Open-Source Software at its heart 🧡

Business Model

To be honest, I don’t have any business model in mind to support the development in the long run of 4keymetrics.dev, it’s too soon to tell this product will succeed in any form. Yet, I have some role models of OSS that succeeded and I might base the governance of 4keymetrics.dev in that direction.

• Discourse. GPLv3 and SaaS

• TimescaleDB. Dual License (Apache-2.0 + Timescale License) and PaaS

• ElasticSearch. Dual License (Server Side Public License and the Elastic License 2.0 or Apache License 2.0) and PaaS

License

I can advance for you that the License will be Mozilla Public License, MPL. I found that restrictive licenses protect the community better compared to more business-friendly as Apache 2.0 Licenses.

There are several success cases of GPL-like licensed software that are viable for business, we have the example of Discourse and WordPress.

Relevant Links

• Tool: 4keymetrics.dev

• Discourse: community.4keymetrics.dev

• GitHub: github.com/4KeyMetrics

• Discord: https://discord.gg/YWtMGAaZk2

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/4keymetrics/

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