What KPIs to use to measure the performance of external IT staff

When working with external IT personnel—whether through outsourcing, freelancers, or IT staffing—one of the greatest challenges is effectively evaluating their performance. Unlike internal teams, where there’s constant supervision and daily interaction, external talent requires clear metrics to ensure their results align with your company’s goals.

Without well-defined indicators, it’s easy to fall into subjective assessments or partial conclusions. This makes it difficult to detect problems early, impacts project quality, and can create misunderstandings or friction due to misaligned expectations.

In this management-focused article, I’ll share with you the key KPIs you should consider to objectively and strategically evaluate the productivity and performance of your external IT talent. These metrics apply to both individual developers and complete external teams, regardless of the hiring model.

1. Time to delivery

This KPI measures how long it takes for a developer or team to deliver a task or feature from the moment it’s assigned. More than just focusing on speed, the real goal is to ensure commitments and deadlines are being met.

• It’s an essential indicator in Agile environments (Scrum, Kanban) or whenever you’re working with deliverables.

• You can compare actual delivery time with original estimates.

• Frequent deviations between estimated and actual delivery often reveal unclear requirements or technical bottlenecks.

2. Development velocity

Velocity refers to the amount of work completed per sprint or cycle. It can be measured in completed tasks, story points, or any other unit relevant to your team.

• It’s not about working faster but about maintaining a consistent, predictable pace.

• Helps you make realistic projections about future deliverables.

• Especially valuable for aligning expectations with internal stakeholders or external clients.

3. Bug resolution rate

This KPI measures the relationship between the number of bugs reported and the number of bugs resolved. It gives valuable insight into the quality of the development work as well as the team’s responsiveness to incidents.

• You can also track average bug resolution time to add more depth.

• If unresolved bugs start piling up, it’s often a red flag for overworked teams or quality issues.

• This is especially useful when managing maintenance projects or continuous delivery systems.

4. Code quality

Measuring productivity solely by speed or quantity is a common mistake. Code quality is one of the most important KPIs for long-term project success.

• Tools like SonarQube or CodeClimate provide technical metrics such as:

  • Test coverage percentages.

  • Technical debt levels.

  • Cyclomatic complexity.

• Keeping high standards for code quality reduces technical debt, facilitates scalability, and lowers future maintenance costs.

• This KPI is crucial for medium- and long-term projects or when the software being developed is critical to your business.

5. Participation in continuous improvement

External talent should do more than just execute tasks. It’s also important to measure how involved they are in improving processes, suggesting optimizations, or contributing to documentation.

Some examples include:

• Proposing better ways to organize code or workflows.

• Documenting internal tools or creating technical guides.

• Actively participating in retrospectives and feedback sessions.

This KPI provides insight into cultural alignment and proactive engagement with your company’s goals.

6. Internal team satisfaction

When external IT teams work alongside in-house personnel, it’s vital to assess how their presence affects internal workflows.

• Brief surveys or structured feedback sessions can reveal valuable insights.

• Key questions might include:

  • Is communication smooth and effective?

  • Does the external talent contribute positively or create friction?

  • Are they helping achieve the team’s overall goals?

Internal satisfaction is often one of the biggest factors in long-term project success.

How to implement these KPIs effectively

Measurement alone won’t drive improvement unless paired with a structured process. To make these KPIs actionable:

1. Define objectives at the start of the contract.

   • Include KPI expectations in formal contracts or project scopes.

2. Use collaborative project management tools.

   • Platforms like Jira, Trello, Asana, or ClickUp are great for tracking tasks, times, and results transparently.

3. Conduct periodic evaluations.

   • Hold formal reviews (monthly, per sprint, or quarterly) to assess progress.

4. Adapt KPIs to the nature of each project.

   • Don’t use the same metrics for maintenance projects as for innovation initiatives.

By implementing clear KPIs from the beginning, you’ll gain not only an objective way to measure performance but also a powerful tool for continuous improvement, helping you get better results while building stronger working relationships with your external IT teams.