is there any elegant way to analyze an engineer's process?

Question

Plenty of sentiment exists that measuring commits is inappropriate.

Has any study been done that tries to draw in more sources than commits - such as:

• browsing patterns
• IDE work (pre-commit)
• idle time
• multitasking

I can't think of an easy way to do these measures, but I wonder if any study has been done.

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On a personal note, I do believe that reflection on one's own 'metrics' could be valuable regardless of (or in the absence of) using these for performance eval. I.E. an un-biased way to reflect on your habits. But this is a discussion matter beyond Q&A.