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Subject:Re: Measuring Productivity From:"Doug, Data Librarian at Ext 4225" <engstromdd -at- PHIBRED -dot- COM> Date:Wed, 9 Nov 1994 15:46:14 -0600
This is written in reply to the following exchange:
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>> Communicators (the creative types that we are) don't like being
>> linked to productivity.
I certainly agree with that. Are engineers tracked for productivity?
Programmers?
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Yes on both counts, depending on the company. Even if they aren't being
scrutinized on an individual basis, you can bet that somebody, somewhere
has their fingers on key productivity measures like sales per employee or
revenue per employee.
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...My boss would tell you I was also hired to do the productivity
measurements.
However, I felt it was more important to translate engineereze into nice
readable copy. I was really good at that.
Was I wrong? Did you ever have to count pages?
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Yes and no. As with many things in life, the key is to ask the right
questions. I'm reminded of the American Air Force in Vietnam. Desperate
to give MacNamara's wiz kids some sort of quantitative data on the progress
of the war, and finding Ho Chih Min's (apologies for the spelling) forces
impossible to analyze, they started measuring things like sorties per day
and tons of munitions dropped. This did a great job reflecting USAF's
level of activity, it did nothing to measure the impact that activity was
having on the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong, which was, after all, the
point. That was one of several reasons the war went so badly.
Counting pages is a bad productivity measure, because it measures only your
effort, not your effect. However, it does not follow that all productivity
measures are a bad idea or can't be applied to us "creative types." The
key to real productivity is measuring your effects. I was intrigued by
recent suggestions such as measuring the impact on the support desk, user
feedback, etc. These sorts of measures get to that key question.
Like I said, even if you aren't being watched on an individual basis, be
assured that somebody is watching those high-level numbers. And if the
broad family of wage-expense-to-income indicators starts to slip, rest
assured somebody will come looking for a way to reduce wage expense. It's
nice to have numbers that show your department isn't the problem.
Even bad productivity measures have their uses, however. I had to count
pages once; I wrote lots of mediocre to bad copy, but it kept me out of
trouble long enough to find a new job.
Doug "There are no small projects,
ENGSTROMDD -at- phibred -dot- com just incredibly bad initial
estimates."
