Most of the time we are busy (productive?) developing and delivering the software tools and methodologies. Product delivery or code delivery dates are decided based on the end product or software component. Productivity is a very relative varying between different product teams and companies such as startup and market leaders. Decades ago software productivity was measured as lines of code, then it was measured as the number of projects or components developed. There are plethora of other techniques such as functional points and then the business values achieved by a team or an indiviual. It is ROI after all. It is too late to identify actual returns until the very end and so productivity is purely function of past experience or a grey area. Individual or teams working on same kind of software and having different ROI respectively depending on the final business value, so business value cannot be actual measure of software productivity.
• References: "Cannot Measure Productivity" by Martin Fowler http://feedly.com/k/17omkp1
