Rework

WHY IT MATTERS

Rework measures the amount of time spent on fixing defects. High rework rates can indicate quality problems or inefficient processes.

HOW IT’S MEASURED

Development work is categorized into four types: new, churn, refactor, and other. 

Rework includes churn and refactor — a proxy for time spent fixing short-term and long-term defects in the codebase.

Rework = % churned code + % refactored code

While a balance of churn and refactor is needed to maintain and improve quality, teams should optimize for shipping more new code on a sustained, long-term basis.