Daily effort model (beta)

A beta of an improved way Swarmia calculates developer effort, measured day by day.

This is a beta feature that we're rolling out gradually. It changes how developer effort is calculated, so the numbers it produces can differ from the current effort model. It isn't available to everyone yet. Reach out to us if you'd like early access.

Swarmia is rolling out a new way of calculating developer effort by moving the calculation from a monthly to a daily basis. On the current monthly model, a single busy stretch of just a few days can define a large share of the whole month. The new daily model calculates effort one working day at a time. Every working day counts equally, no matter how much activity happened on it, so a single busy day can't dominate the month.

Monthly model

Daily model

The new model is also more flexible. The current model only calculates across a whole month, so a calendar month is the smallest period it can report on. The new daily model produces a value for each working day, so you can look at effort by day or by week, not just by month.

We keep refining the effort model based on the data we gather and real usage, making the model more accurate and easier to understand. The new daily model is part of that work.

How it compares to the current model

	Current effort model	Daily effort model (beta)
How effort is calculated	From a whole month's activity in one calculation	Each working day separately, then added together
Inactivity	Only stretches longer than 5 business days are deducted	Every working day without activity lowers effort
Minimum activity	Contributors with fewer than 10 activities a month are excluded	No minimum, even a single event counts
Contributors with only issue-tracker activity (no code)	Excluded, below the minimum	Receive effort from their assigned in-progress days
Activity on pull requests not linked to an issue	Counted at half weight	Counted at full weight
Assigned in-progress issues	Counted	Counted, with more weight
Time-off adjustments and current-month proration	Applied	Applied, unchanged

Two of these changes pull in opposite directions. Dropping the half-weight penalty on unlinked pull requests raises that code work, while giving assigned in-progress issue days more weight raises issue-tracker work. The two roughly cancel out, so the balance between code and issue-tracker work stays close to the current model.