Playing with metrics, how professional lying unconsciously
Finally, I can write something in my blog after months of inactivity. The last few months is the craziest months I ever pass up until now, there’s a lot of ups and downs for me personally and also in some teams I work with. I think it is a little bit similar to how my body weight behave. Around February this year, I think is the best time I ever had my body weight increased up to 67 kgs (it is a good number for 170 cm guys like me, I was only 53 kgs guys when I was in high school). I’m starting to reach 67 kgs again after months loosing my weight.
Okay, back to the topic, in this article I want to talk about metrics. Before going forward I want to cite a great quote by Peter Drucker, and I think a similar statement is also stated by W. Edwards Deming
“If You Can’t Measure It, You Can’t Improve It.”
I want to tell a story that I consider funny. In one of my client company, I work with several coworkers, and there was a metrics to measure the amount of work you’ve done in each team in the company. The metrics will be shared in the weekly meeting. One of them is how many merge requests (MRs) open for each specific team. Although it is useful when you use it in a fair way, it can help you measure how the product management and prioritization perform, but it is can’t be used as a single number that gives the team score whether they’re in a good shape or not. Because in my experience if you use that as a single number to measure how well the team performs, they tend to play with numbers or something not good happens. Here are something will happen
- Close the MRs before the meeting and open it again after
- They will demotivate people to create a merge request for small improvements. It might be good that people will spend only in important stuff, but most of the time something good happens when you create a good stuff from the small things like how you name, organize or create docs for your code. I ever try to create some merge request in Friday and complained by one of the people there because it makes the number in Monday meeting not looking good.
- It will show false confidence to the bosses and higher management. The high-level people rarely look in the low-level and will be feeling good seeing the MRs is keeping low, but that single metrics not really uncover what happens in the team, what is the team dynamic.
In contrast, I propose:
- Metrics is good, but you better not judge team or people performance based on only several metrics, I believe in the collaboration and discussion to uncover the truth.
- You better not have something that discourages people to do good things.
I think I lose my concentration tonight, but good enough to give a warm up to my brain.
