from Hacker News

Killing Productivity by Measurement

by tathagata on 5/1/13, 1:40 PM with 11 comments

• by sergiosgc on 5/1/13, 3:14 PM

  On the other hand, you can't manage what you can't measure. Rather than simply bashing productivity measurement, I'd be very interested in seeing a good discussion on non-intrusive productivity measurement.

  If there's a community where this can produce nice results, it's HN.

• by hammock on 5/1/13, 4:00 PM

  I don't get it. In my experience, the mere act of measurement is not supposed to increase productivity per se; it is supposed to help you diagnose the problem, implement a solution and determine the success thereof.

• by sageikosa on 5/1/13, 4:13 PM

  Measuring productivity for comparison requires the tasks under observation to be comparable. This may be good for laying bricks or bailing hay, but it is terrible for designing solutions to problems requiring the problem to be defined as part of the task (except in the very broadest sense to gauge the effectiveness of the estimation process, not the "work" itself).

• by Yhippa on 5/1/13, 4:21 PM

  In almost every real-world application of this measuring productivity is a drag.

  It's almost as if it's subject to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. In this case with the tools you're using you're not getting an accurate reading of productivity because typically the burden is on the subject to make the readings and they will get annoyed at this intrusion into their day job.

  So how do you measure tasks without being intrusive? Is it really possible?

• by olegp on 5/1/13, 4:06 PM

  Does anyone know of any good blog posts or other resources on trying to improve team productivity by measurement?

  At https://starthq.com, we are considering introducing a feature that would let people see how much each web app is used within their team in an attempt to increase their productivity, but much like the comic strip I wonder whether that will do more harm than good.