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I am a programmer using sharepoint, and I am the lead and the project manager since I do not have subordinates under me. My boss is non-technical and doesn't have much visibility in what I do and just base his review from the clients.

Now my question is, how will I measure my efficiency against the small tasks/projects that clients give me. If these were the same compared to my previous job, wherein the projects lasts for months and divided into iterations/sprint (Agile) then I can easily have an estimate and start from there.

But the problem now is that, there is no methodology or framework, they just give me the details of what they want and we start from there. Basically here's a flow of what I do.

1. Receive request from client - create a site with this and that
2. I ask questions/clarifications
3. Client answers the question
4. I implement the requirement (most of the time it only takes a day or two) and will advise the client once it is completed.
5. Client will check if OK
6. Client may comeback after few days if there are updates/changes

Basically this is the flow of what I do.

So how will I measure my efficiency? because what I understand is I am very efficient/productive because I complete the requests within hours or few days and we do not reach a point wherein they need to follow up the status of the requirements.

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Lean on the basics of project management. You have a list of tasks that need to get done and they vary in complexity and effort. Some of them will take a while, some will be short and fast and easy to do. Break down those tasks as far as you can to capture all of the things that are required for the overall task to be done.

To measure your progress and efficiency, you need this metric; the number of tasks completed. With that, you can establish a baseline and measure the variance. In a good month, you complete 30 tasks, in a bad month you complete 10. For your personal efficiency, you can time how long it took to complete the tasks (you said they're each only a few days long). Aim to reduce how long it takes to complete a task (without compromising the quality of the project of course!) and aim to increase the number of tasks completed.

These metrics are very basic but as there is no overall formal process, they're good enough that you can see how well things are going.

Another way to measure your progress and efficiency is by the number of new things you have learned or how much better you've gotten at certain skills. These are less quantitative and more qualitative; you feel like you're gaining more knowledge and thinking of new ways to be more efficient.

In conclusion, you don't need agile or scrum or any methodology. You just need a list of tasks, how much of them are completed and from there you can add more metrics and information that is useful to you and your manager and clients (such as the $$ business value delivered when a task is completed).

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As you mentioned you are familiar with Scrum and Agile Methodologies. Let's treat the current workflow that you follow for building the websites as a Story of a Sprint. While you are in discussion with the Customer regarding a new task, see if the task could be broken into Smaller units of work. In case possible create a Trello board and use it as a discussion point with the Customer and your boss. Please take care of the following Points:

  • Treat a individual task as a single Story Sprint.
  • Make sure to give Business value and Story Point to the task (or Story, as I would like it to be called)
  • Ensure DOD (Definition of Done) is defined for the Story.

This would give you a data about the tasks with a total Business value done in a Months time and additionally you would be able to get your Velocity for a month. This would provide you a data to present to your management about your efficiency. It could be treated as your efficiency Matrix.

Additionally, work to educate your boss, he many not be technically sound but must definitely understand the complexity of a task. This would in turn add value to you as a person and improve your reputation in the organisation as a Problem Solver.

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you've answered your own question,

there is no methodology or framework,

If there is no methodology, then there is no way to measure efficiency. First impose some structure on the task (requirements gathering), then you can measure the task, then you can optimize the task.

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Lean on some Lean Manufacturing metrics. (see what I did there?)

  1. Lead Time - Amount of time between customer request and delivery.
  2. Cycle Time - Amount of time between beginning implementation and delivery.
  3. Throughput - Number of requests you can deliver in a given period of time.
  4. Customer Rejects - How many times the customer requests changes post delivery. (May or may not be useful for software. YMMV)
  5. Value Add - How much money you've made your company /or clients.

Here are 28 metrics that you may be able to adapt to software development. Not all of them apply, but some do.

P.S. Look into Kanban. It sounds well suited to your current development workflow.

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