Organization Health Score
- What the Health Score Measures
- How Individual Metrics Roll Up
- Interpreting the Score
- Using Health Scores for Due Diligence
- The Risk Summary
What the Health Score Measures
The organization health score is a composite metric (0-100) that rolls up multiple risk and distribution indicators into a single number. It answers the question: "How resilient is this engineering organization to contributor changes?"
A higher score indicates better health: more distributed knowledge, higher bus factors, and more active contributors.
How Individual Metrics Roll Up
Each repository receives a health score based on four equally-weighted factors (25 points each):
Bus Factor Score (0-25)
Based on the DOA-calculated bus factor. Each bus factor point adds 5 points, up to 25. A bus factor of 5+ earns the maximum score.
Single Author Score (0-25)
Penalizes repositories where many files have only one significant author. A repository where 100% of files are single-author scores 0; a repository with 0% single-author files scores 25.
Gini Score (0-25)
Penalizes uneven commit distribution. A Gini coefficient of 0 (perfect equality) scores 25; a Gini of 1 (total inequality) scores 0.
Activity Score (0-25)
Based on the number of contributors who have committed in the last 30 days. Each active contributor adds 5 points, up to 25.
The organization health score is the average of all repository health scores.
Interpreting the Score
| Score | Level | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 75-100 | Healthy | Knowledge is well-distributed, bus factors are adequate, teams are active |
| 50-74 | Moderate | Some concentration risks exist but overall resilience is acceptable |
| 25-49 | At Risk | Significant knowledge concentration; multiple single-points-of-failure |
| 0-24 | Critical | Severe dependency on very few contributors; high organizational risk |
Using Health Scores for Due Diligence
When evaluating an engineering organization:
- Compare health scores across repositories, because a single low-scoring critical repository is more concerning than several low-scoring utilities
- Cross-reference with lifecycle data, since a moderate health score combined with many "winding down" contributors is worse than the score alone suggests
- Track trends by running audits periodically to see if health scores are improving or declining
- Consider context, because a new organization with many "ramping up" contributors will naturally have lower scores that should improve over time
The Risk Summary
The organization metric summary includes:
- Total repos analyzed: How many repositories were included in the assessment
- Total files analyzed: The sum of unique files across all repositories
- Orphaned files: Files with no active contributor having significant ownership
- Top risk repos: Repositories with a bus factor of 1 or 2
These numbers provide context for the health score. An organization with 100 repositories and 5 orphaned files is in a very different situation than one with 10 repositories and 5 orphaned files.