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KPI/OKR stop working once workers starting to optimize for KPIs, ignoring stuff like quality of code or the mood in the team (is it supportive or is it till bur
by octacat 3y ago
KPI/OKR stop working once workers starting to optimize for KPIs, ignoring stuff like quality of code or the mood in the team (is it supportive or is it till burnout?). Especially cool when companies put generalised goals, and the product development has different goals. For example, if we wanna improve the loading time of the site overall, we could just completely ban the slowest clients (problem "solved", KPI improved).
- ethanbond 3y agoThis is why experienced managers should consider, “what’s a way we might superficially achieve this while yielding neutral or negative actual results?” and then set up more KPIs to detect that happening. It’ll never be perfect, but it’s probably better than nothing. Company-destructive assholes and metric-gamers can run their playbooks with or without KPIs or OKR:
- octacat 3y agoWho has said metric-gamers would be so obvious? "Add more KPIs" - yea, only benefits the metric-gamers actually. The regular workers would be more annoyed and distracted. Do we focus on the sprint and tasks in it? Or do we focus on 10 new KPIs?
- ethanbond 3y agoWell if you want to just complete tasks then go ahead and do that. If you want your business to succeed it’s pretty important that the task-doing is producing positive results for the business overall (which is what KPIs imperfectly try to measure). “Ha, you want a brake and a steering wheel? Those are annoying and distracting, do we push the gas pedal or not?” Yeah it’s complicated but all these components are necessary.