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I manage a mix of developers, architects, project managers and business processors/developers. I measure their productivity on team results compared to their te

I manage a mix of developers, architects, project managers and business processors/developers. I measure their productivity on team results compared to their team predictions as well as my own experience. I do have a long history of doing development projects in the public sector with a primary focus on increasing efficiency and benefit realization, but a lot of it is honestly gut feeling and softer management strategies where I encourage openness. If people aren’t feeling well, maybe they are going through a divorce, maybe they’ve run out of motivation I want them to share it, so we can help them get to where they want to be or give them time to process. I guess I could have a single inefficient worker and never spot it through measurements, but I typically notice because it changes the team dynamic and the way people interact. I understand why this would worry some managers, but I don’t believe you can apply factory line thinking or strategies to brain-workers because it doesn’t suit them, especially not if you want them to cooperate in actual teams and not just be a bunch of grouped individuals competing not to be measured as the bottom 15%. I am Scandinavian though, and our work-culture is very different from the American.

konschubert 8y ago
> I understand why this would worry some managers, but I don’t believe you can apply factory line thinking or strategies to brain-workers because it doesn’t suit them, especially not if you want them to cooperate in actual teams and not just be a bunch of grouped individuals competing not to be measured as the bottom 15%. I agree and I hope you're not suggesting that I'm doing that. My problem is that "I trust my gut" doesn't work very well either as a strategy fot me because I just don't have that body of experience to draw from. So I'm a bit lost.
- eksemplar 8y ago
  For development stuff like planning poker works in that it gives you an estimate to go from. Maybe they exceeded their estimate for good reasons, but it’s a good place to start a discussion from. It also makes your programmers better at estimating. For things like project management you have schedules and plans. And then there is always customer/client satisfaction. Aside from that you also have a boss who has expectations for you, are you meeting those? If your boss is not just satisfied but happy with your perfomance output you’re probably doing well.

konschubert 8y ago

> I understand why this would worry some managers, but I don’t believe you can apply factory line thinking or strategies to brain-workers because it doesn’t suit them, especially not if you want them to cooperate in actual teams and not just be a bunch of grouped individuals competing not to be measured as the bottom 15%. I agree and I hope you're not suggesting that I'm doing that. My problem is that "I trust my gut" doesn't work very well either as a strategy fot me because I just don't have that body of experience to draw from. So I'm a bit lost.

eksemplar 8y ago
For development stuff like planning poker works in that it gives you an estimate to go from. Maybe they exceeded their estimate for good reasons, but it’s a good place to start a discussion from. It also makes your programmers better at estimating. For things like project management you have schedules and plans. And then there is always customer/client satisfaction. Aside from that you also have a boss who has expectations for you, are you meeting those? If your boss is not just satisfied but happy with your perfomance output you’re probably doing well.