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Feature - Developer Coaching

Developer Coaching provides individualized insights for every engineer on your team. It brings together delivery patterns, review behavior, programming languages, workload balance, and knowledge area…

heather.hazell
Updated by heather.hazell

Developer Coaching provides individualized insights for every engineer on your team. It brings together delivery patterns, review behavior, programming languages, workload balance, and knowledge areas to help developers grow and to help leaders support and unblock their teams.

TL;DR

  • A developer-level coaching dashboard built from real Git (and connected PM) activity.
  • Includes Development Experience, Developer Metrics, Wellness Workload, Knowledge Areas, Top Coding Languages, and Top 5 Completed Items.
  • Designed for growth and support — not ranking or performance scoring.
  • Privacy-safe views with contextual patterns across time, teams, and work types.

Overview

Developer Coaching gives engineering leaders and developers a balanced, data-driven view of individual work patterns across coding, reviews, and workload. It helps you spot bottlenecks, overload signals, and knowledge concentration — and turn those signals into healthier habits and clearer coaching conversations.

Not a scoring system: Coaching is not meant to compare developers against each other. It’s a lens for support, sustainability, and growth.

Availability: To enable access ensure “Show Individual Metrics” is toggled on in Company Settings → General and confirm your user permissions include access to Developer Coaching.

Before You Begin

  • Your Git provider must be connected.
  • Your team membership should be accurate in LinearB.
  • Developers must have activity in the selected time range.
  • To use Issue Type workload views and see Connected Issues, ensure your PM tool is connected and properly mapped.

Once enabled, Coaching works automatically.

Where to Find Developer Coaching

Open the Coaching dashboard
  1. In LinearB, go to Teams > Coaching.
  2. Use the filters at the top:
    • Developer selector (left) to choose the person you want to view.
    • Team selector (right) to limit the developer list to one team.
    • Date range (right) to adjust the reporting period.

The default view includes: Developer Profile Overview, Knowledge Areas, Top Coding Languages, Development Experience, Wellness Workload, Developer Metrics, and Top 5 Completed Items.

1. What Developer Coaching Measures

Developer Coaching is made up of multiple insight areas driven by your developers’ real activity. Each section reflects the selected developer, team, and timeframe.

Core Insight Areas

Developer Profile Overview

This snapshot appears near the developer’s name and provides quick context on:

  • The teams the developer contributes to in LinearB.
  • The repositories they actively work on.
  • The programming languages they use most frequently.
Knowledge Areas

Highlights the top 3 repositorieslast 6 months, ranked by engagement (including PRs and code reviews). Only repositories where the developer performed 10% or more of their work appear.

Use this to:

  • Identify knowledge islands and potential single-point-of-failure risk.
  • See where a developer’s effort is concentrated.
  • Plan pairing, onboarding, and knowledge sharing.
Top Coding Languages

Shows a developer’s primary languages based on merged PRs over the past 6 months. For each language, LinearB calculates the percentage of lines written relative to the total across merged PRs authored by the developer.

  • Respects excluded file patterns defined in repository settings.
  • Shows only languages representing more than 10% of total usage.
  • Includes icons for fast scanning.

Use this to understand technical focus, support cross-skilling, and balance frontend/backend expertise across your team.

Development Experience

Tracks what happens after

  • Pickup Wait Time – time from PR issued to first reviewer comment.
  • Merge Wait Time – time from PR approval to merge into the main branch.
  • Deploy Wait Time – time from PR merge to production deployment.

These values reflect the selected timeframe and compare to the previous period. Calculation follows your Company Settings method.

Wellness Workload

Visualizes a developer’s workload over time to highlight cognitive load and context switching. The view groups activity by:

  • Branch (default)
  • Issue Type (selectable toggle)

A healthier pattern typically shows:

  • Roughly 2–3 concurrent colors per time slice.
  • Work that completes cleanly before new work expands.
  • A balanced mix of planned delivery and KTLO-style tasks.

Use this to identify overload early and coach toward more sustainable focus patterns.

Developer Metrics

Provides a radar chart view of a developer’s patterns as both a PR submitter and PR reviewer.

Submitter signals include:

  • PRs Opened
  • PR Size
  • PR Maturity

Reviewer signals include:

  • Reviews Conducted
  • Review Depth
  • Pickup Time

You can also compare workload distribution against another team or the overall organization to provide broader context.

2. Top 5 Completed Items

See a developer’s most recent completed work

The Top 5 Completed Items table appears at the bottom-right of the dashboard and updates based on your Wellness Workload selection.

Branches Mode

  • Lists the most recently completed branches in the selected timeframe.
  • Sorted by code changes (descending).
  • Shows:
    • Branch Title (links to the Git branch)
    • Connected Issues (first shown alphabetically; others on hover)
    • Iterations
    • Code Changes

Issue Type Mode

  • Lists the top completed PM issues marked as done within the timeframe.
  • Sorted by story points (descending), then by time in progress.

3. What Developer Coaching Helps Teams Understand

For Managers

  • Where a developer is getting blocked after PRs are issued.
  • Whether workload looks sustainable or fragmented.
  • Where knowledge is concentrated and should be distributed.
  • How balanced a developer’s submitter vs. reviewer patterns are.
  • Which coaching actions will unlock healthier delivery habits.

For Developers

  • Where you’re most impactful across code, reviews, and knowledge areas.
  • How your workload and focus patterns are trending over time.
  • Which skills or stack areas you may be deepening or shifting toward.
  • What small habit changes could improve flow and sustainability.

4. Best Practices

  • Use Coaching in 1:1s to talk about patterns, not outcomes.
  • Pair Wellness Workload with DevEx wait times to separate “too much work” from “work getting stuck.”
  • Use Knowledge Areas to plan shadowing and reduce single-owner risk.
  • Use Top Coding Languages to support staffing decisions and cross-skilling.
  • Revisit the same developer view on a steady cadence to spot drift early.

5. Troubleshooting

I don’t see Developer Coaching
  • Confirm the feature is enabled for your org (beta access).
  • Ensure “Show Individual Metrics” is turned on in Company Settings.
No data for a developer
  • The developer may not belong to a team.
  • The selected timeframe may not include enough recent activity.
  • Your Git integration may be missing repos or permissions.
Workload (Issue Type) is empty
  • Confirm your PM integration is connected and mapped.
  • Check that issues are linked to branches/PRs where applicable.
Knowledge Areas look too narrow
  • Remember the view shows the top 3 repositories over the last 6 months.
  • Only repos where the developer did 10%+ of their work will display.

✅ You now have a complete, self-serve guide for the Developer Coaching dashboard.

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