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canyonwalkerI'm thinking again about metrics in the workplace. I'm specifically referring to metrics on human work. For example, "How many tasks did each person on the team complete last week?" "What's the average time for a person to do X?" "What percentage of their time is this person/this team spending on category Y?"
It's not a new thought, as I've dealt with business metrics for most of my career. I've even studied them in school as far back as the late 1980s. Plus, the idea of applying modern observation and statistics to how people do things in business dates back to the late 19th century. Metrics aren't exactly new.
But while metrics in business aren't new, often it sure does feel like everybody's just figuring them out for the first time. That's surprising to me because when I was learning about the science of process measurement in the 1980s, a lot of the pitfalls of collecting statistics on people's work were already known. They'd already been known of, and studied, for 50 years. But here we are 30+ years later and it seems 98% of everybody clamoring for metrics has no idea.
I figure the reason for that is that collecting metrics and viewing analytics reports is trivially easy now. So much of our work is managed through computer software. With the computer already in the loop, metrics fall out practically for free. Anyone can suddenly get reams of data and colorful charts. But what do those charts mean? What are the limits of usefulness, accuracy, and predictive power behind the colorful lines, boxes, and pie wedges? When metrics were kind of a specialty, you'd have a person educated in the field to set up, collect, and interpret the data. You'd have an expert with the numbers. Now any noob can get numbers, which means any noob can suddenly feel confident their novice opinion is correct because they've got data.
It's not a new thought, as I've dealt with business metrics for most of my career. I've even studied them in school as far back as the late 1980s. Plus, the idea of applying modern observation and statistics to how people do things in business dates back to the late 19th century. Metrics aren't exactly new.
But while metrics in business aren't new, often it sure does feel like everybody's just figuring them out for the first time. That's surprising to me because when I was learning about the science of process measurement in the 1980s, a lot of the pitfalls of collecting statistics on people's work were already known. They'd already been known of, and studied, for 50 years. But here we are 30+ years later and it seems 98% of everybody clamoring for metrics has no idea.
I figure the reason for that is that collecting metrics and viewing analytics reports is trivially easy now. So much of our work is managed through computer software. With the computer already in the loop, metrics fall out practically for free. Anyone can suddenly get reams of data and colorful charts. But what do those charts mean? What are the limits of usefulness, accuracy, and predictive power behind the colorful lines, boxes, and pie wedges? When metrics were kind of a specialty, you'd have a person educated in the field to set up, collect, and interpret the data. You'd have an expert with the numbers. Now any noob can get numbers, which means any noob can suddenly feel confident their novice opinion is correct because they've got data.
