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KPIs are such an incredible waste of time. At my last job out team was tasked with coming up with 5 KPIs, that alone took many hours of discussion (times 6+ peo

KPIs are such an incredible waste of time. At my last job out team was tasked with coming up with 5 KPIs, that alone took many hours of discussion (times 6+ people) and then to implement the KPI reporting we would have to start logging/recording a ton more data (manually, in JIRA). On top of that we had to write code to pull that data from JIRA so it could spit out the KPI number. After all of this I once again pointed out how useless and stupid the whole process was and how easy to game it was. We could easily lie in our scripts if we wanted to, it wasn't like management was capable of checking, and it was going to encourage reclassifying/hiding certain bugs (hard issues) and pretending other things were bugs (small changes/minor feature requests) to juice the numbers. The whole processes took a _ton_ of time and in the end I never heard another department's KPI numbers (we were told every dept was doing it and we would all report monthly for the whole company to see) and I'm fairly certain it fizzled out though I left shortly after that.

itsoktocry 3y ago
>We could easily lie in our scripts if we wanted to, it wasn't like management was capable of checking, and it was going to encourage reclassifying/hiding certain bugs (hard issues) and pretending other things were bugs (small changes/minor feature requests) to juice the numbers. But why would you do this??? Holy cow, some of these comments. As someone fixing bugs, why would you not be interested in the classification, status and tracking of bug-related data? Why would your first instinct be to lie about what's happening with the business? To what end? Honestly, this thread has me wondering if the average worker does so little that they see KPIs as a way of being accountable, and don't want that in any manner.
- polonbike 3y ago
  I think op is saying that he is gaming the stupid system, to be a bit less stupid and unfair. Not that he wants to cheat or not fix issues. Classifications of issues is indeed important, but if management is not playing a fair game, then neither am I, while still doing my job, tracking and fixing bugs efficiently
- mholm 3y ago
  > Why would your first instinct be to lie about what's happening with the business? To what end? If your compensation or continued employment is tied to metrics, especially metrics that aren't inherently valuable, then there's much more incentive to game/fudge them than to do the work to actually resolve them.
- apexalpha 3y ago
  We have this at our job too. We do pentesting to prevent us having vulnerabilities and maybe even be hacked. But then the new manager wanted a KPI. In their infinite wisdom the management people decided that "Cost saved by preventing a hack, in Euros per product" was going to be the KPI. So now a bunch of pentesters have to try and estimate what the impact of a potential, never happening (because we found it) vulnerability would have been on our company, if exploited by a malicious actor. After a while of guesstimating this they started giving us flack for the number going down. We tried explaining over and over again that this makes no sense as a KPI. We're just guessing essentially. But no, they want the KPI and they shall get the KPI. So now we just guesstimate the potential cost a little higher every month, but not too much.
  - mejutoco 3y ago
    I cannot understand why there are not 3 or 4 categories of incidence severity (user data exposed, etc. I think there is a standard or multiple) and management maps each of those to a quantity in euros. Then everyone would get what they want, since it is just an estimate.
    - apexalpha 3y ago
      There's a standard for this called CVSS. We pointed it out but it gives a scale 1-10. And they really wanted € KPI. Oh well.
- tuckerpo 3y ago
  Humans are lazy. Most take the path of least resistance. You're incentivized to hit a goal - if you can hit that goal with minimal effort by obfuscating or exaggerating to naive management, why wouldn't you? You're just an IC, a worker bee, you probably don't have equity or any real ties to the company's overall success (which isn't an engineer's job to define in the first place).
- pathartl 3y ago
  The article touches on this somewhat. If you tie any sort of monetary benefit to KPI results, you've created an incentive to either game the system or lie. If you lose the context of the work by trying to simplify metrics and then base people's worth on those metrics, people aren't going to care as much about the quality of their work.
- pnt12 3y ago
  Grug find bug, Grug beaten with club. Grug no find bug, Grug no beaten with club. Grug work hard for own KPI: amount of times not beaten with club.
zerkten 3y ago
It sounds like you have a dysfunctional organisation as much as KPIs are a problem. KPIs and everything around them have been studied to death in more than the last 40 years, so there should be few surprises around when they are useful or not. People and politics are the constant so we never get away from organisations like the one you describe.
- fendy3002 3y ago
  Here's a good Q&A as well as links to some good reads there: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1168131/how-to-measure-software-development-performance https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1168131/how-to-measure-s... KPIs (as a target) are undoubtedly good for something that's directly benefit the company (with the caveat of long or short period), and the task is static. This is good for 40 years ago where factory worker are a thing, which nowadays, those good KPIs are mostly replaced with machine specifications. What those people's complaining about the KPIs are for knowledge tasks, usually software development, where it's full of uncertainty and almost impossible to estimate (see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hofstadter's_law) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hofstadter's_law). If you can't estimate the work, how can you make targets? You can only measure it and hope that the measurement can help for future estimation.
  - zerkten 3y ago
    I think the first thing you need to do is get out of the programmer mindset. The problem you are solving may be closer to resolving the anxiety of leadership, or build confidence. In reality, the situation is complex and our responses may undermine confidence and drive anxiety at different rates with different stakeholders If you ask some folks from other fields to read the StackOverflow link you shared, they'd provide some insights that aren't fully explored. I don't think you can get there with KPIs, but at the same time, you can't completely discard methods like these which have some level of credibility with other stakeholders. As evidenced by many conversations on this topic involving programmers, KPIs get completely thrown out, or worse, undermined. Insufficient time and effort is given to actually making the leap to something that might be useful sustainable. Hence, many places never break away from KPIs and the complaints keep coming. Measurement without particular targets can be quite useful when the organization is open to sharing data without punitive responses. This gives you different axes to explore with regards performance so that you can shape your messaging around performance provided you can contextualize it. EDIT: My personal philosophy on how strategy should work and be implemented is closer to that of Mintzberg (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Mintzberg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Mintzberg) than Porter.

itsoktocry 3y ago

>We could easily lie in our scripts if we wanted to, it wasn't like management was capable of checking, and it was going to encourage reclassifying/hiding certain bugs (hard issues) and pretending other things were bugs (small changes/minor feature requests) to juice the numbers. But why would you do this??? Holy cow, some of these comments. As someone fixing bugs, why would you not be interested in the classification, status and tracking of bug-related data? Why would your first instinct be to lie about what's happening with the business? To what end? Honestly, this thread has me wondering if the average worker does so little that they see KPIs as a way of being accountable, and don't want that in any manner.

polonbike 3y ago
I think op is saying that he is gaming the stupid system, to be a bit less stupid and unfair. Not that he wants to cheat or not fix issues. Classifications of issues is indeed important, but if management is not playing a fair game, then neither am I, while still doing my job, tracking and fixing bugs efficiently
mholm 3y ago
> Why would your first instinct be to lie about what's happening with the business? To what end? If your compensation or continued employment is tied to metrics, especially metrics that aren't inherently valuable, then there's much more incentive to game/fudge them than to do the work to actually resolve them.
apexalpha 3y ago
We have this at our job too. We do pentesting to prevent us having vulnerabilities and maybe even be hacked. But then the new manager wanted a KPI. In their infinite wisdom the management people decided that "Cost saved by preventing a hack, in Euros per product" was going to be the KPI. So now a bunch of pentesters have to try and estimate what the impact of a potential, never happening (because we found it) vulnerability would have been on our company, if exploited by a malicious actor. After a while of guesstimating this they started giving us flack for the number going down. We tried explaining over and over again that this makes no sense as a KPI. We're just guessing essentially. But no, they want the KPI and they shall get the KPI. So now we just guesstimate the potential cost a little higher every month, but not too much.
- mejutoco 3y ago
  I cannot understand why there are not 3 or 4 categories of incidence severity (user data exposed, etc. I think there is a standard or multiple) and management maps each of those to a quantity in euros. Then everyone would get what they want, since it is just an estimate.
  - apexalpha 3y ago
    There's a standard for this called CVSS. We pointed it out but it gives a scale 1-10. And they really wanted € KPI. Oh well.
tuckerpo 3y ago
Humans are lazy. Most take the path of least resistance. You're incentivized to hit a goal - if you can hit that goal with minimal effort by obfuscating or exaggerating to naive management, why wouldn't you? You're just an IC, a worker bee, you probably don't have equity or any real ties to the company's overall success (which isn't an engineer's job to define in the first place).
pathartl 3y ago
The article touches on this somewhat. If you tie any sort of monetary benefit to KPI results, you've created an incentive to either game the system or lie. If you lose the context of the work by trying to simplify metrics and then base people's worth on those metrics, people aren't going to care as much about the quality of their work.
pnt12 3y ago
Grug find bug, Grug beaten with club. Grug no find bug, Grug no beaten with club. Grug work hard for own KPI: amount of times not beaten with club.

zerkten 3y ago

It sounds like you have a dysfunctional organisation as much as KPIs are a problem. KPIs and everything around them have been studied to death in more than the last 40 years, so there should be few surprises around when they are useful or not. People and politics are the constant so we never get away from organisations like the one you describe.

fendy3002 3y ago
Here's a good Q&A as well as links to some good reads there: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1168131/how-to-measure-software-development-performance https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1168131/how-to-measure-s... KPIs (as a target) are undoubtedly good for something that's directly benefit the company (with the caveat of long or short period), and the task is static. This is good for 40 years ago where factory worker are a thing, which nowadays, those good KPIs are mostly replaced with machine specifications. What those people's complaining about the KPIs are for knowledge tasks, usually software development, where it's full of uncertainty and almost impossible to estimate (see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hofstadter's_law) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hofstadter's_law). If you can't estimate the work, how can you make targets? You can only measure it and hope that the measurement can help for future estimation.
- zerkten 3y ago
  I think the first thing you need to do is get out of the programmer mindset. The problem you are solving may be closer to resolving the anxiety of leadership, or build confidence. In reality, the situation is complex and our responses may undermine confidence and drive anxiety at different rates with different stakeholders If you ask some folks from other fields to read the StackOverflow link you shared, they'd provide some insights that aren't fully explored. I don't think you can get there with KPIs, but at the same time, you can't completely discard methods like these which have some level of credibility with other stakeholders. As evidenced by many conversations on this topic involving programmers, KPIs get completely thrown out, or worse, undermined. Insufficient time and effort is given to actually making the leap to something that might be useful sustainable. Hence, many places never break away from KPIs and the complaints keep coming. Measurement without particular targets can be quite useful when the organization is open to sharing data without punitive responses. This gives you different axes to explore with regards performance so that you can shape your messaging around performance provided you can contextualize it. EDIT: My personal philosophy on how strategy should work and be implemented is closer to that of Mintzberg (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Mintzberg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Mintzberg) than Porter.