Measurement

I love it when a plan comes together….

/ Jeff Hora / Leave a comment
Swooshable Planning

Image by Bohman via Flickr

Earlier this week I was fortunate enough to sit in on a quarterly meeting of some of the hardest working folks I know. My company calls them Product Planners.  The difficulty of what they do is hidden by the simplicity of their title…if you’ve never worked in an enterprise that is tracking released products, fixing them as needed, and then planning new ones with the added uncertainty of forecasting their popularity, then you aren’t aware of the tricky dance these folks do.  Years ago while watching one of my favorite Mystery Science Theater 3000 movies, I remember Crow T. Robot remarking, upon seeing a credit for someone tasked with Planning, “Oh, that’s what I want to do….I’ve always wanted to Plaaaaaan!”

I thought it was a bit odd too, at the time.  Now I know better.

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Measure the glue–continued

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Measuring time

Image by aussiegall via Flickr

In my earlier post about the “glue” of collaboration, I spent the time describing the area of discussion and none about the actual measurement.  That wasn’t exactly by design, as much as it was a realization that measuring collaboration means establishing some ground rules and accepting some risks and vagueness.

The ground rules are both simple and tough. Define what it is you’re trying to measure.  I’m involved with that right now on my team and it is not easy.  Objective measurement, as well as methodology, of collaboration and/or teamwork means setting up scales, deliverables, degrees of importance or weight (“So, was that assist worth a 5 or a 7?” and what does that mean?).  There’s also the issue of whether this measurement applies to the group or to individuals and how you measure individual collaboration in a way that reduces the ability to game the system (“I’ll give you a +5 in the assessment if you give me one as well.”).  Messy stuff….

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Measure the glue–continued

/ Jeff Hora / Leave a comment
Measuring time

Image by aussiegall via Flickr

In my earlier post about the “glue” of collaboration, I spent the time describing the area of discussion and none about the actual measurement.  That wasn’t exactly by design, as much as it was a realization that measuring collaboration means establishing some ground rules and accepting some risks and vagueness.

The ground rules are both simple and tough. Define what it is you’re trying to measure.  I’m involved with that right now on my team and it is not easy.  Objective measurement, as well as methodology, of collaboration and/or teamwork means setting up scales, deliverables, degrees of importance or weight (“So, was that assist worth a 5 or a 7?” and what does that mean?).  There’s also the issue of whether this measurement applies to the group or to individuals and how you measure individual collaboration in a way that reduces the ability to game the system (“I’ll give you a +5 in the assessment if you give me one as well.”).  Messy stuff….

Continue reading →