Can software leaders use metrics without damaging culture?
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Re: Can software leaders use metrics without damaging culture?
#2No according to mythical man month.
Re: Can software leaders use metrics without damaging culture?
#3If you skipped straight to the HN comments, the article is worth reading. The author makes some thoughtful suggestions and points out some common pitfalls.
Although recently, I've noticed another reason to tread lightly with metrics: Metrics have become a highly-charged topic among developers who consume a lot of Twitter, Reddit, HN and other developer chatter. The cynical response to any metrics tracking program is to claim that they will be gamed, or abused, or misused by management. Once your team has adopted this cynical mindset, they're unlikely to see metrics any other way, so they get to work gaming and abusing the system.
In my experience, getting as much team buy-in as possible is the key to making metrics a success. It's healthy to invite the teams to an open discussion about what metrics they think should be tracked. Give them an opportunity to openly discuss objections, and make a valid effort to acknowledge and work with their suggestions as you develop your metrics program. Ideally, you would find one or two metrics that benefit the team members directly rather than the company or management.
It's important that developers can see the metrics as an open target to help them excel within the company, rather than a punitive measure or something that management can use as a substitute for real engagement. When team metrics decline, use that opportunity to open a discussion with the team. If you let metrics become a punitive measure or a guide for who gets promoted or fired, they will absolutely be gamed to death.
Re: Can software leaders use metrics without damaging culture?
#4I don't think so. Basically, with metrics you are saying that you need to reduce a multidimensional value down to a single dimension. In addition, metrics are open to gaming. Take for example cycle time:
>Cycle Time: If you can only have 1 metric, make it cycle time. Cycle time measures the amount of time from work started to work delivered; in other words, the amount of time from first commit to production release. Cycle time is important because it is a proxy for how optimized your team is.
If cycle time is being optimized for, then eventually, someone on the team will discover that if they make an "experimental prototype" on their laptop before checking it in, their cycle time goes down a lot.
There really is no substitute for an involved manager, however that does not scale, and so you go to metrics. But, I would argue, you have already damaged the culture.
Re: Can software leaders use metrics without damaging culture?
#5When leaders start micromanaging and overreaching, there's really no more autonomy and the responsibilities for outcomes are taken away from the individual. Notice: This can happen at the management-level as well!
Similar with metrics, it becomes a diversion to attend to waste (extra efforts to produce quality data), while removing autonomy and opportunities.
Those metrics that do work, are owned by people themselves, and are used as tools, not as a whip, carrot or other games of diversions. As tools, the metrics can be changed or removed, as seen necessary.
Re: Can software leaders use metrics without damaging culture?
#6Visible metrics that tie to company, product or infrastructure health are highly useful if they are relatively objective and not subject to gaming. But tying them to individual performance is always the wrong thing in knowledge work; not only is it dehumanizing but it also fails to account for the subjectivity in any creative profession where people with the same job title work on radically different things.
As a manager there are some individual metrics that could serve as a “smell” to investigate but you shouldn’t publish those metrics or ever use them in communications or as reasoning for any decision.
Re: Can software leaders use metrics without damaging culture?
#7I don't think so. Basically, with metrics you are saying that you need to reduce a multidimensional value down to a single dimension. In addition, metrics are open to gaming. Take for example cycle time: >Cycle Time: If you can only have 1 metric, make it cycle time. Cycle time measures the amount of time from work started to work delivered; in other words, the amount of time from first commit to production release.…
You’d never take a team wide metric like cycle time (which is a function of the whole company) and use it to evaluate a single person. There shouldn’t be any benefit to an individual to have a low cycle time.
Re: Can software leaders use metrics without damaging culture?
#8I think metrics are very useful but only when used properly. A lack of metrics means we can't always see what's going on and goals may be unclear; an overreliance on metrics is gameable and too impersonal.
Laos, as the article indicates to some extent, what you measure becomes what matters. As a manager, the metrics you create will (to an extent) help to define what kind of team you run and build.
Re: Can software leaders use metrics without damaging culture?
#9What is this "culture" thing in the article? It's undefined although apparently there's a danger of it being bad. Things can "impact" it. It can be grown and it can be damaged. I'm left thinking it may be a god or it may even be a skin rash.
What are they selling? Oh, project management software.
Re: Can software leaders use metrics without damaging culture?
#10No.