What I learned when reading the rethinking productivity in software engineering book:

• It’s a very boring book as expected; equally boring than books on project management. Instead of stories and lessons learned, the author decided to write a classical powerpoint-ish scientific paper perfect for PhD, but lacking any value for actually learning something.
• There is no silver bullet, no single performance metric.
• All performance metrics are complex, therefore useless.
• Even agile software development has no clear definition of productivity or a solution for measuring productivity. Velocity is so easy to misuse that one cannot recommend it.
• Your team knows when someone is slacking off. But you have to be on the factory floor to learn it.
• Code quality has direct impact on productivity.

The best way to achieve extreme productivity is to:

• Team of A players run circles around B and C players. Hire A+ devs and let them self organise.
• Keep them motivated. Good pay is a must but it can only go as far. Flock them around a mission that actually makes sense to everyone and is not just an empty marketing buzzshit. Make them feel elite, that they’re changing the world.