Gain visibility into true engineering performance. The Leaderboard balances Quality Score and Impact to produce a Contribution Score that highlights developers who ship robust code, not just those who ship the most lines. By normalizing scores against your team’s average, it creates a fair playing field for everyone.
Both metrics contribute equally (50/50 weighting), ensuring that high-volume output doesn’t mask low-quality work, and that complex architectural improvements are recognized appropriately.
What you get
- Team-relative scoring that’s meaningful within your team context
- Balanced assessment preventing gaming through quantity over quality
- Fair comparison where large refactors count proportionally more than trivial changes
- Quality incentives through Quality Score (1-10 scale)
Quality score
Each PR receives a Quality Score on a 1–10 scale. The score starts at 10 and is reduced based on the number and severity of findings — critical issues have a higher penalty than low-severity ones. The Team Quality Score shown on the dashboard is the average across all developers.
Contribution Score = (Normalized Quality Score + Normalized Impact Score) / 2
- Normalized Quality Score = Author’s Average Quality Score / Team Quality Score
- Normalized Impact Score = Author’s Total Impact / Team Average Impact
Understanding the Contribution Score
| Contribution Score | Label | Interpretation |
|---|
| ≥ 1.5 | Excellent | Significantly above team average |
| 1.0 – 1.5 | Good | Above team average |
| 0.8 – 1.0 | Average | At or near team average |
| < 0.8 | Needs Improvement | Below team average |
Impact calculation
Each Merge Request’s impact score measures the complexity of the change:
MR Impact = (files_changed × 6.0) + (lines_added × 0.14) + (lines_deleted × 0.28)
| Metric | Weight | Rationale |
|---|
| Files Changed | 6.0 | Cross-file changes indicate higher complexity |
| Lines Added | 0.14 | New code requires understanding and integration |
| Lines Deleted | 0.28 | Deletions often require more careful analysis (2× addition weight) |
| Minimum Impact | 1.0 | Floor value to prevent division issues |
Example calculation
Team Data:
| Author | Avg Quality Score | Total Impact |
|---|
| Alice | 8.5 | 450 |
| Bob | 7.2 | 280 |
| Carol | 9.0 | 120 |
- Team Quality Score = (8.5 + 7.2 + 9.0) / 3 = 8.23
- Team Avg Impact = (450 + 280 + 120) / 3 = 283.33
Alice’s Contribution Score:
- Normalized Quality = 8.5 / 8.23 = 1.03
- Normalized Impact = 450 / 283.33 = 1.59
- Contribution Score = (1.03 + 1.59) / 2 = 1.31
Alice scores 1.31 — 31% above team average!
Use Cases
The leaderboard is more than just a ranking—it’s a diagnostic tool for engineering health.
1. Identifying Mentors & Leads
Developers with consistently high Contribution Scores (High Quality + High Impact) are ideal candidates for:
- Mentoring junior developers
- Leading complex architectural refactors
- Reviewing critical PRs
2. Spotting Burnout & Process Issues
- High Impact, Low Quality: A developer might be rushing to meet deadlines, sacrificing quality. This is a signal to check workload.
- High Quality, Low Impact: Could indicate being stuck on a difficult problem, lack of tasks, or over-optimization.
3. Balancing Team Load
If one developer has significant impact score dominance, the team has a high “Bus Factor”. Use the leaderboard to ensure knowledge and workload are distributed more evenly.
4. Quality Gamification
Encourage the team to improve their Quality Score by writing cleaner, more maintainable code, turning code review into a positive feedback loop rather than a chore.
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