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Tristan Pollock

Waydev - Git analytics (2018) version 1.0

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Incredible
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V1 - The fast & visual way to understand your developers. Waydev analyze your codebase from Github, Gitlab & Bitbucket to help you bring out the best in your engineers work.

Check out our V2 - https://www.producthunt.com/posts/waydev-2-0-1

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Jeremy Thomas
I agree with what folks like Peter and James are saying. Lines of code and commit count are not accurate ways to measure "impact." Usually a high frequency of commits is an indication of poor code quality -- developers are introducing new changes to fix errors introduced by previous ones. Instead, you should expect a steady cadence of incremental changes, where proper time and thought is put into each. Test coverage is another important metric, which is not covered here. Further, most product-development organizations celebrate when developers remove lines of code. We, for example, have a bot that adds a "hand clapping" emoji to a commit when the developer has removed code. In short, a high commit volume and more lines of code are often anathema to what good software development is.
Alex Circei
Maker
@jgrahamthomas Hey Jeremy, How I said to James, we're targeting non-technical founders who work with remote developers where you don't know anything about them, and from now on you will be able to track them - week by week. What do you say to give us a try and tell us if we're relevant? https://app.waydev.co/register
Alex Circei
Maker
@jgrahamthomas Great to be back on here. At the previous launch, we've received a lot of feedback regarding our solution, we've processed the feedback, and we're excited to kick off 2019 by launching our new product. The new dashboard gives you an overview of your work so you can check the health or see correlations across your commits. -- https://www.producthunt.com/post...
Hendrik Haandrikman

I'm usually not one to go for negative reviews, but:

What is the "Impact" metric?

The metric you need to watch, week-by-week. At Waydev, we developed the "Impact" metric to analyze performance data. Impact takes the following into consideration: (1) The highest chunk of activity you did in the past, (2) The average activity of a developer based on our research and (3) The behavior of your activity in the last weeks.

"Activity" is not the same thing as impact. Teaching 'non-technical founders' that those two things are even remotely related sounds like a great way to undermine your team's actual impact. You don't want devs to blindly ram out and submit code. You want them to come up with smart, scaleable and effective ways to tackle issues and resolve challenges.

Pros:

I'm sure they mean well

Cons:

The core 'impact' metric doesn't signify actual impact and 'trains' non-devs on the wrong KPI's

Alex Circei
Maker
Hey @hhaandr! Thank you for the feedback. We thought about your feedback, and you are right. Because of that, we've decided to change the "Impact Score" with "Activity Score," who describes best what we are doing at Waydev.
Alex Circei
Maker
Great to be back on here. At the previous launch, we've received a lot of feedback regarding our solution, we've processed the feedback, and we're excited to kick off 2019 by launching our new product. The new dashboard gives you an overview of your work so you can check the health or see correlations across your commits. -- https://www.producthunt.com/post...
Jonathan Woodard

If you don't trust your technical team to execute the product vision and present you ongoing results, it's not time for a new tool, it's time for a new technical team.

Pros:

Unclear

Cons:

Utilizes specious metrics for "Impact"

Alex Circei
Maker
Hey @woodardj Trust needs to be earned. And as a non-technical founder, when do you know when the will not deliver? It is a significant risk if you are non-aware of their progress, the risk of killing the project. From now on, for being on track with their activity, you can use Waydev.
Alex Circei
Maker
Great to be back on here. At the previous launch, we've received a lot of feedback regarding our solution, we've processed the feedback, and we're excited to kick off 2019 by launching our new product. The new dashboard gives you an overview of your work so you can check the health or see correlations across your commits. -- https://www.producthunt.com/post...
Vlad Calus
What an amazing product, I'll make sure to give it a try! 😍
Alex Circei
Maker
@vladcalus Thanks!
Gabriel

I've been using Waydev for a while now and I love it! It's easier when you have an overview on your team's activity

Pros:

easy to use, clear metrics

Cons:

still looking for them

Alex Circei
Maker
Thanks Gabi!
Chris Turlica
Really cool product and product team. Good luck!
Valentin Buzea
Maker
@cturlica Thanks!
Alex Circei
Maker
@cturlica Hey!!! Thank you very much!
Ricardo Ghekiere
Amazing product! Just wondering how secure the data storage is?
Alex Circei
Maker
@ricardo_ghekiere Thanks Ricardo! Your security is critical to us. We do not keep a copy of your repositories, we only copy the "GIT" folder and right away after our analyzation is done we delete it. We always connect via SSH key pairs. When you disconnect your repositories, all associated data is purged from the system. This can be accomplished securely by allowing public access via secure SSH access to internal repositories. This ensures that all data transmitted to Waydev is done over a secure protocol, and allows our customers to maintain strict authentication and access security using SSH keys. Waydev is built on the Amazon AWS service. We currently store all data in a secure database.
Karl Karafiat
Hey guys, looks interesting. Let me ask a simple question to understand it a bit better - what exactly is the impact score and how is it calculated?
Alex Circei
Maker
@kkarafiat Hey Karl! Thank you for asking, at Waydev, we developed the "Impact" metric to analyze performance data. Impact takes the following into consideration: (1) The highest chunk of activity you did in the past, (2) The average activity of a developer based on our research and (3) The behavior of your activity in the last weeks. We like to say that is the metric you need to watch, week-by-week.
Marius
@kkarafiat @alex_circei (2) >> The average activity of a developer based on our research >> what does that mean, the average daily LoC and commit counts? What was your research based on?
Alex Circei
Maker
@kkarafiat @maephisto Hey Marius! Based on analyzing the GIT activity in thousands of repositories.
Marius
@kkarafiat @alex_circei is the behaviour(LoC, commit frequency) of developers in opens source repos the same with the behaviour of a web agency freelancer or a developer working 9-5 in a startup ? (I assume those thousands repos you mentioned are open source repos on GH). Also, would love to read a more detailed blog post on this 'Impact' magic sauce, since it's the main selling point.
Alex Circei
Maker
@kkarafiat @maephisto Due to this launch, we've been in alpha stage a long period, and we've tested on thousands of repositories from our clients; We will also write a detailed blog post regarding the "Impact Score."
Ovi Negrean
Nice work, @alex_circei & team! I'm curious - How is Waydev free?
Alex Circei
Maker
@ovinegrean Hey Ovi! A very good question! We have a free forever freemium plan. In our freemium plan we limit the features, like the view of your developers in our dashboard - after the trial, you can see only one developer, but your weekly report will include all the developers. BTW we have a great deal for Product Hunt, with the PRODUCTHUNT code at checkout you save 50% off any new plan.
Jacob Ablowitz
"Helping non-technical founders understand what's going on with their technical team" is a fantastic objective and well worth the effort - and this is why you're getting consistently positive early feedback from prospective non-technical founder customers. Unfortunately, counting SLOC and/or commits, *no matter how sophisticated your algorithm,* is a fundamentally flawed means of assessing either "what's going on" with a technical team or "how well are they doing," and this is why you're receiving consistently critical feedback from senior technical folks. The big problem you have is that your non-technical customers will eventually encounter the bad outcomes driven by a "how much stuff did I do" measurement approach, and when they do, they will be really angry with you because you will have effectively been lying to them for an extended period of time. *Non-technical founders: please don't ever measure software teams on how much stuff they did. It will make you very, very unhappy in the end.* Digging deeper, this is not a matter of "well what if we analyze the data better?" The problem is that the only real way to measure the impact of a technical team is in their ability to deliver value - and value is not encoded anywhere within any software repo, whether CVS, SVN, git, MTFS, BitBucket, or any other repo management tool. Period. If you want to measure value, you have no choice but to measure against requirements or user stories in some way.
Alex Circei
Maker
Hey @jacob_dmi, Thank you for the feedback! I would like to, first of all, clarify our target - the non-technical founder/manager who works with 1 - 15 developers, without a technical PM and process in place. Now, in all the development space, everything is tracked with the developers' input. How does a non-technical founder take decisions without real data? Waydev isn't without developer input, we connect to your GIT, Slack, Email and we try to understand your teams' behavior and to keep the non-technical updated with simple overview reports. We don't replace any of the existing tools; we come from another angle for the non-tech folks. I have received while researching and building the app, numerous critics but also praises. Most vocals were senior devs indeed. What I want to touch on is that there are also developers that are not that good. If your team's impact has been dropping for months and you lose that budget, it's not a failed project issue; it's a failed business issue for bootstrapped companies. We want to help founders spot weak points before it's too late for their business. This is not an enterprise level tool; it's an SMB tool leaning towards outsourced work. Would be great if you considered trying us.
Jacob Ablowitz
@alex_circei I understand all of that, and understood it before you replied. The problem here is that instead of getting "the right data" to analyze the problem, you are choosing instead to analyze "the data we have," which is activity (NOT PRODUCTIVITY) data. Activity data - how many lines of code, how many commits - tells you ZERO about the value of what was produced. Without knowing the value of what was produced you have zero information on productivity, and therefore cannot possibly inform decisions in any meaningful way. My response to your question "How does a non-technical founder take decisions without real data?" my response is "By getting real, relevant, meaningful data and analyzing it - NOT by analyzing whatever data I can easily get my hands upon and hoping there's some vague correlation to the thing I actually want to measure." Bottom line, speaking as an experienced startup CEO and CTO, I'm warning you that you are not only not providing value to users but actually providing them NEGATIVE VALUE by giving them "data-like substance" that isn't actually data!
Jacob Ablowitz
@alex_circei As for "there are developers that are not that good," the problem here is that a significant percentage of "not that good" developer types will actually look just fine according to your metrics, simply because they're creating lots and lots of code and commits, while many "good developers" who know how to do things efficiently will have fewer lines of code and fewer commits while producing more actual customer value. This isn't speculation, this has been thoroughly studied by the Computer Science academic community for literally decades. You clearly haven't studied this as well as you think you have - it's nice that you've received criticism and praise from people including senior devs while building it, but you're failing on a seriously basic level here. I can't emphasize this enough: reporting software development outcomes to non-technical users using lines of code and commits as the basis for your performance metrics is OUTRIGHT MALPRACTICE AS A TECHNOLOGY LEADER.
Jacob Ablowitz
Jacob Ablowitz
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