Comment by munk-a
5 years ago
I don't disagree that metrics can cause problems - but they could also helpful when working on difficult problems. I don't know of one that exists but there are times that a really tough nut lands on my desk and I can't bring back a solution for a few weeks A good metric would highlight the fact that, a week in, while I may have no solution to the problem, progress is being made.
Right now our metric is basically - talk to the developer and try and see if he's BSing you and goofing off, that's super subjective and very vulnerable to personal biases, but, it is a metric - it's just not an objective metric.
I don't know what it is - I've never seen evidence of a good one out there - but I don't begrudge managers trying to find new objective measures for productivity. I'd be quite excited to see one myself.
The mistake is in trying to quantify a qualitative issue. Trying to reduce progress building a program to the number of lines and such. It inherently doesn't make any sense and it's not possible to accurately represent such things as a number or collection of numbers without losing all the detail (and thus, being wrong).
The idea that only truths expressable in abstract equations are objective and thus true is exactly the kind of false belief that gets us in trouble.
> Right now our metric is basically - talk to the developer and try and see if he's BSing you and goofing off, that's super subjective and very vulnerable to personal biases, but, it is a metric - it's just not an objective metric.
That isn't a metric. Metric, having the same root as metre, is about measuring. What you're talking about there is a heuristic, and they're much more effective for tracking qualitative issues.