Get Started

Measure productivity

Overview

Socratic helps you understand productivity through key metrics including cycle time (i.e. speed), throughput, and efficiency. The idea of these metrics is simple. Engineering's job is to turn ideas into working software. If we get a lot done, well and at good speed, we know—and can show—that we're doing our job.

You can ask to see productivity metrics for a

  • Person
  • Team
  • Entire organization
  • Project
  • Issue type (e.g. Bug, Story)
  • Label
  • Workflow statues (e.g, In Progress)

Socratic answers with detailed insights and interactive visualizations that trend productivity changes over time.

How it works

Socratic analyzes your work item history to calculate productivity metrics by:

  • Measuring cycle time (how long work takes from start to finish)
  • Calculating throughput (how much work gets completed over time)
  • Analyzing efficiency

The metrics are calculated based on completed work items within your selected time period. For trending analysis, Socratic compares current productivity with historical data to identify improvements or degradations.

Types of questions you can ask

Team and people analysis

  • "What was Jenny's cycle time for bugs last month?"
  • "Show me throughput trends for the engineering team"
  • "Which team has the best productivity metrics last month?"
  • "Show me metrics by team for the past month"
  • "Which team has the longest cycle time for the quarter?"
  • "Show me the cycle time of the Frontend and Backend teams for last quarter"

Organization analysis

  • "What was our cycle time last month?"
  • "How has cycle time changed over the last quarter?"
  • "What was our cycle time for bugs last month?"
  • "Show me the slowest workflow status for last month?"
  • "Show me the slowest workflow status in the Engineering project last month?"
  • "What was the cycle time for the Engineering project last month?"

Find workflow bottlenecks

  • "What was the average time in the Code Review status last month?"
  • "What was the slowest status in the Engineering project last quarter?"

Analyze by type of work

  • "Show me performance metrics by issue type"
  • "How long did it take us to work Bugs last month?"
  • "How many issues labeled "Customer" did we completed last quarter?"

Comparative analysis

  • "Show me metrics by project for the past month"
  • "Show me metrics by label for the past month"
  • "Show me metrics by issue type for the past month"

Capabilities & usage

Specify time ranges

You can ask about different time periods:

  • Specific dates: "from January 1 to March 31"
  • Relative periods: "last month", "this quarter", "past 6 weeks"

Filter by different dimensions

You can group or filter your analysis by:

  • Teams
  • People
  • Issue types
  • Labels
  • Projects
  • Worklflow statuses

Reading the results

Socratic provides a natural language summary of your productivity data, highlighting key insights and trends. The agent also provides interactive visualizations.

Depending on your question, you'll see:

  • Line charts showing metric trends over time
  • Comparison filters (e.g. team, person, etc)
  • Historical trend analysis

Best practices

1. Be specific about time ranges

  • ✅ "Show cycle time for the last 30 days"
  • ❌ "Show recent cycle time" (too vague)

2. Use exact names when possible

  • ✅ "Show productivity for Project Alpha for past 30 days"
  • ✅ "Show Sarah Johnson's productivity metrics for past month"
  • ❌ "That project's productivity"

4. Compare meaningful groups

  • ✅ "Compare cycle time between Brad and Nolan for q2"
  • ✅ "Show Frontend vs backend team productivity for past month"

Common use cases

  • Team productivity reviews
  • Process improvement
  • Capacity planning
  • Executive reporting