4 ms·

How do you measure your value at that level of granularity Ed? Given that Value == whatever the customer says, how do you measure the change in value of the pr

by Sukotto 15y ago

How do you measure your value at that level of granularity Ed? Given that Value == whatever the customer says, how do you measure the change in value of the project over the course of a day? (Excluding the trivial case of you completing exactly one "value" per day) Do you make a reasonable guess at the overall value of a given project, then compare % completed as a % of the total value? (How then do you handle the receding goalposts of scope creep?) I often find it difficult to measure the value of my work mid-project. It's usually only at the end when I can, for example, point to how many hours-per-person-per-year of work I've saved other people.

edw519 15y ago
How you measure... Simple answer: I guess my original post was a long round-about way of saying: Bad measure: "Do I feel like a had a good day?" Better measure: "Do I feel like I got a lot done today?" Best measure: "Do I have more valuable stuff built now than I did this morning?" Sometimes we should just use the simplest measure and leave it at that. how many hours-per-person-per-year of work I've saved other people Oddly, in my experience, this is a poor metric. Example: I wrote a sophisticated workbench to make inventory planners much more efficient. And they were. All 8 of them. Then I made a 5 minute change to enable factory supervisors sort their dispatch list 8 different ways. Which helped 800 people become more efficient. That's why I don't even try to measure "value" anymore. I let the customer worry about that. I stick with daily deltas as my best measure.
- Sukotto 15y ago
  So, if I understand you correctly, you treat this as a binary and not as a quantity. if total_value_end_of_day > total_value_start_of_day then productive else NOT productive Do I have that right?
  - edw519 15y ago
    Pretty much. Do that enough days in a row and you'll have little else to worry about. (I'd say "good" instead of "productive".)

by Sukotto 15y ago

edw519 15y ago

How you measure... Simple answer: I guess my original post was a long round-about way of saying: Bad measure: "Do I feel like a had a good day?" Better measure: "Do I feel like I got a lot done today?" Best measure: "Do I have more valuable stuff built now than I did this morning?" Sometimes we should just use the simplest measure and leave it at that. how many hours-per-person-per-year of work I've saved other people Oddly, in my experience, this is a poor metric. Example: I wrote a sophisticated workbench to make inventory planners much more efficient. And they were. All 8 of them. Then I made a 5 minute change to enable factory supervisors sort their dispatch list 8 different ways. Which helped 800 people become more efficient. That's why I don't even try to measure "value" anymore. I let the customer worry about that. I stick with daily deltas as my best measure.

Sukotto 15y ago
So, if I understand you correctly, you treat this as a binary and not as a quantity. if total_value_end_of_day > total_value_start_of_day then productive else NOT productive Do I have that right?
- edw519 15y ago
  Pretty much. Do that enough days in a row and you'll have little else to worry about. (I'd say "good" instead of "productive".)