I am using TFS 2010 Team Build and the related reporting services report Build Summary. Within this report is a Code Churn column. However, the data displayed in this column isn't making any sense to me.
In my application I have roughly 10,000 lines of code (it's a fairly new app). However, the code churn gives me a number 57791. Can anyone explain this to me?
Code churn is, if I remember correctly, the sum of lines added, deleted, and changed. Unfortunately, sometimes TFS calculates churn incorrectly, and doesn't see the specific line changes, but instead considers it to be a delete and re-add of the code. I've seen this happen with encoding changes under TFS 2008, where one of our developers had a different encoding turned on on his installation of Visual Studio.
Even when they are correct, use the code churn numbers with a critical eye. Your best developers aren't the ones that crank out the most code-- they're the ones who crank out the best code (which, in a lot of cases, is the least code).