Introducing Metrics API: The Most Flexible Way to Share and Evaluate Your Data

This post is part of our historical archive. It represents the beliefs, actions, products, and services of Code Climate as of its publication date. Today, Code Climate focuses on providing enterprise leaders the software development data, context layer, and playbooks needed to build the AI-native software organization their enterprise needs. Head to codeclimate.com to learn more.

Reporting key engineering data is an effective way for leaders to illustrate their teams’ progress. Whether you’re using engineering data in standups, retros, or presentations with stakeholders, these objective insights can help you align engineering goals with business goals and stay on track with delivery.

While engineering leaders benefit from viewing all of their team metrics within Velocity, other stakeholders will not always have access to the platform. Key collaborators have their own Business Intelligence tools, including Tableau and Power BI, that they prefer for viewing metrics and reports. Members of your organization even have custom reporting templates or other tried and trusted processes for viewing and analyzing data.

With Code Climate’s Metrics API, you don’t have to alter stakeholders’ existing processes: instead, you can extract metrics from Velocity into existing BI tools in order to build tailored reports across the organization, and communicate with outside parties on how engineering initiatives align with business outcomes to communicate upwards on progress.

With this tool, you can evaluate and measure your engineering team’s performance and business impact over time. Rather than keeping engineering data siloed, organizations can connect the dots and analyze engineering and business data together with the Metrics API.

What You Can Get Out of a Metrics API

By using Velocity’s Metrics API, you can improve transparency across teams, putting numbers into a context and environment that stakeholders are familiar with.

Metrics API allows users to leverage up to 365 days of historical data, making it possible to review trends month over month. If you’ve made organizational changes over the past year, such as hiring more developers, data can show how those changes have impacted the business.

How it Works

To start using Metrics API:

• Generate an API token within your page settings (for Velocity users with admin privileges).
• Use the token to create a GET request to pull data out of Velocity (the specific API token will not expire once created).
• Once you ingest Velocity data into your preferred BI tools (Power BI, Tableau) or Excel spreadsheets, you can analyze your team’s metrics together with your business data.
• Users cannot change, edit, or delete any of the metrics data pulled out of Velocity with Metrics API.

Who Can Use Metrics API?

Code Climate’s Metrics API allows organizations to export data from Velocity into any Business Intelligence tools they already use. This comprehensive tool is one of Velocity’s many robust API capabilities, allowing your organization to pull or extract, customize, and modify data specific to your needs.

Now that you can extract your Velocity data, you can connect engineering and business insights for more meaningful takeaways. Read our tips for CTO and CEO alignment, and learn why engineering metrics are business metrics.

Why a Strategy Matters

At the heart of every successful software engineering team is a drive for three things:

1. A culture of continuous improvement
2. The ability to move from idea to impact quickly, frequently, and with confidence
3. A software organization delivering meaningful value

These goals sound simple enough, but in reality, achieving them requires more than just wishing for better performance. It takes data, action, and, most importantly, a cultural shift. And here's the catch: those three things don't come together by accident.

In my experience, whenever a large-scale change fails, there's one common denominator: a lack of a cohesive strategy. Without a clear, aligned strategy, you're not just wasting resources—you’re creating frustration across the entire organization.

Step 1: Define Your Purpose

The first step in any successful engineering insights strategy is defining why you're doing this in the first place. If you can't answer this clearly, you risk chasing a vague, unhelpful path.

Step 2: Understand Your People

Consider who will be involved in this journey:

• Who will be using the developer productivity tool/insights platform?
• Are these hands-on developers or executives looking for high-level insights?

Step 3: Define Your Process

What do you expect people to do with the data once it’s available? What actions are leading to improvement?

Step 4: Program and Rollout Strategy

Design a value loop within a smaller team or department first. Once successful, share stories and roll it out more broadly across the organization.

Step 5: Choose Your Platform Wisely

Your platform should align with your strategy—not the other way around. Understand your purpose, people, and process before evaluating platforms.

Looking Ahead

To build a successful engineering insights strategy, you need to go beyond just installing a tool. An insights platform can only work if it’s supported by a clear purpose, the right people, a well-defined process, and a program that rolls it out effectively. The combination of these elements will ensure that your insights platform isn’t just a dashboard—it becomes a powerful driver of change and improvement in your organization.