Software factory baseline

A baseline defines the comparison

A baseline is more than a number captured before a project starts. It says what was measured, where the measurement came from, and under which conditions. Record the services or repositories included, the start and end events, the time window, the work types, and any changes in staffing, demand, release policy, or instrumentation.

For example, a team evaluating a new review workflow might record time to first review, time to merge, review rounds, change size, quality findings, and relevant delivery outcomes for comparable changes. A baseline that combines a migration with routine feature work may be too broad to explain the effect of the workflow.

Use a baseline with a hypothesis

State what the intervention is expected to change and what evidence would count as improvement. A platform update may be expected to reduce setup waiting. A review change may be expected to reduce queue age without increasing escaped defects. The baseline should include the measures that can test both the intended benefit and the likely tradeoff.

How Weave can help

Weave can preserve a development baseline around code output, pull requests, review, quality, and delivery flow. Teams can return to the underlying changes when a trend moves and decide whether the comparison is still valid. Product, incident, platform, and developer feedback data may be needed to complete the baseline.