George Dinwiddie, a wonderful blogger on Agile software development, wrote on “Working Hard? Or Hardly Working?”. Please read his blog and then you can read my comment below:

Good day George,

I read your blog all the time and enjoy what you write about. This blog entry caught my attention and I had to respond.

The one problem I have with the judgment of “working hard or hardly working” is that is presumes that working hard is always good. A large issue in our industry is the “busy-ness” factor of all people involved in the organization from executives to managers to developers and operations. We all are too busy and therefore our hard work turns into adding more work than if we were to slow down and make better decisions about how to complete the work best.

So, even if someone could tell if another person is “working hard” or “hardly working” I am not sure this is a good measure of anything. In the end I would rather understand if the organization or product team as a whole is getting faster in their delivery of valuable software. If this is the case then all people involved are improving their capabilities for the good of the whole.

Coincidentally, Tom Perry wrote on “Measuring Productivity = Continuous Improvement?” where he makes many references to “monkeys” but also makes a conclusion that teams can create their own productivity metrics to help improve their own delivery capabilities rather than management defining problematic measurements for the team that create poor responses.

Both blog entries have great information and references in them and I hope that those of you interesting in “measuring productivity” take a look. I am still on the Alistair Cockburn side of the house when it comes to measuring productivity. I believe it cannot be done but that doesn’t mean that the team cannot create metrics that help them improve.

And finally I will just point you towards Ron Jeffries wonderful writing on “Productivity” from “Annals of Kate Oneal”.