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"I need some way to know how hard the engineers are working." Why? And what does "hard" even mean? (working more hours?) The goal is good results, not hard wor

by lann 18y ago

"I need some way to know how hard the engineers are working." Why? And what does "hard" even mean? (working more hours?) The goal is good results, not hard workers. "...clear correlation between hours worked and results produced." Working zero hours will produce zero results, so there is obviously a correlation, but this correlation cannot be linear, and may not even be positive in all cases. I would expect working 100 hours in a week would would make for worse results than 40 hours. Hours are not a measure of output, or efficiency, or results; they are a measure of time.

lennysan 18y ago
My point is that there's it's very difficult to measure the productivity and "results" of knowledge work, and you need to look at all the data. This includes looking at hours worked, plus the quality of the end product, the way they work with others, the clients impression, and the success of the product in general. This is a complex problem the requires a holistic approach.
- jimbokun 18y ago
  I'm going to take the opposite position of the last post I made and give some reasons for measuring hours worked. It is important to track hours worked per feature or bug in order to improve future estimates. You also want to know if things are taking longer than expected, and why. You may also want to know if finishing and committing fixes and features too quickly leads to more bugs and maybe encourage developers to take more time and get it right the first time. Is this the kind of thing you have in mind when you want to measure hours worked? That I can certainly agree with.
- lann 18y ago
  "My point is that there's it's very difficult to measure the productivity and "results" of knowledge work, and you need to look at all the data. This includes looking at hours worked..." I agree with jimbokun: measuring "time spent" can be useful in many cases, but it does not measure productivity or quality of work. I understand how difficult it is to measure productivity, but the answer is not to use a poor metric just because it's handy.

by lann 18y ago

lennysan 18y ago

My point is that there's it's very difficult to measure the productivity and "results" of knowledge work, and you need to look at all the data. This includes looking at hours worked, plus the quality of the end product, the way they work with others, the clients impression, and the success of the product in general. This is a complex problem the requires a holistic approach.

jimbokun 18y ago
I'm going to take the opposite position of the last post I made and give some reasons for measuring hours worked. It is important to track hours worked per feature or bug in order to improve future estimates. You also want to know if things are taking longer than expected, and why. You may also want to know if finishing and committing fixes and features too quickly leads to more bugs and maybe encourage developers to take more time and get it right the first time. Is this the kind of thing you have in mind when you want to measure hours worked? That I can certainly agree with.
lann 18y ago
"My point is that there's it's very difficult to measure the productivity and "results" of knowledge work, and you need to look at all the data. This includes looking at hours worked..." I agree with jimbokun: measuring "time spent" can be useful in many cases, but it does not measure productivity or quality of work. I understand how difficult it is to measure productivity, but the answer is not to use a poor metric just because it's handy.