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Anyone have experience surveying project teams anonymously? "Do you think this project will be successful? Why or why not?"

by pbreit 7y ago

logicallee 7y ago
>Anyone have experience surveying project teams anonymously? There is an interesting way to do this anonymously in a larger organization where people don't trust the anonymity of their votes: you can ask everyone to flip a coin and report it in answer to: "Consider whether the project will be successful (yes/no.) We will survey responses anonymously/statistically. In this way no individual reporting will be known. A single time (don't repeat this for this question), flip a coin. Consider whether the project will be successful (yes/no), then choose one of the two options: [1] You both think the project will be successful (yes) AND you flipped heads. [2] You either don't think the project will be successful, or you flipped tails (or both). In other words, anyone flipping tails must pick 2. So on an individual level, you have plausible deniability, since you can say you support the project but flipped tails. Statistically, we will measure what percentage below 50 flipped heads, to see how many people think our project will fail." Due to this methodology, people can voice dissent. In toxic despotic environments, you will have 100% heads. (Which should not be possible, since you can only go below 50% for heads at a statistically significant level, not above.) I'm not sure what size organization this can work at statistically but it's an interesting method.
yummypaint 7y ago
I have heard of prompting people with something like "imagine we proceeded as planned and the project failed. Write a brief history of that failure." I havent seen this tried, but would be interested to hear from people who have.
flukus 7y ago
I don't trust the anonymity and without that you can't trust the honesty. These surveys always get sent out with some sort of id/token in an email and after that you're feeding data into a black box where you have no idea what kind of information is being stored and how much of that information is available to the creators the survey. If there were some sort of neutral third party (like a non-profit or maybe a union) running the survey I might have some trust, but companies in this space like survey monkey are not neutral, they're beholden to whoever pays them.
- intarga 7y ago
  You could just do it the old school way: print out responses and put them in a ballot box.

Anyone have experience surveying project teams anonymously? "Do you think this project will be successful? Why or why not?"

by pbreit 7y ago

Anyone have experience surveying project teams anonymously? "Do you think this project will be successful? Why or why not?"

logicallee 7y ago

>Anyone have experience surveying project teams anonymously? There is an interesting way to do this anonymously in a larger organization where people don't trust the anonymity of their votes: you can ask everyone to flip a coin and report it in answer to: "Consider whether the project will be successful (yes/no.) We will survey responses anonymously/statistically. In this way no individual reporting will be known. A single time (don't repeat this for this question), flip a coin. Consider whether the project will be successful (yes/no), then choose one of the two options: [1] You both think the project will be successful (yes) AND you flipped heads. [2] You either don't think the project will be successful, or you flipped tails (or both). In other words, anyone flipping tails must pick 2. So on an individual level, you have plausible deniability, since you can say you support the project but flipped tails. Statistically, we will measure what percentage below 50 flipped heads, to see how many people think our project will fail." Due to this methodology, people can voice dissent. In toxic despotic environments, you will have 100% heads. (Which should not be possible, since you can only go below 50% for heads at a statistically significant level, not above.) I'm not sure what size organization this can work at statistically but it's an interesting method.

yummypaint 7y ago

I have heard of prompting people with something like "imagine we proceeded as planned and the project failed. Write a brief history of that failure." I havent seen this tried, but would be interested to hear from people who have.

flukus 7y ago

I don't trust the anonymity and without that you can't trust the honesty. These surveys always get sent out with some sort of id/token in an email and after that you're feeding data into a black box where you have no idea what kind of information is being stored and how much of that information is available to the creators the survey. If there were some sort of neutral third party (like a non-profit or maybe a union) running the survey I might have some trust, but companies in this space like survey monkey are not neutral, they're beholden to whoever pays them.

intarga 7y ago
You could just do it the old school way: print out responses and put them in a ballot box.