It will not take much more than a team of 10 people before you start wondering if your guys do what they are supposed to do… the way they’re supposed to. Typical interrogations usually range from: “How much time my people spend working on their assignments?”, “Will they deliver in time?”, “How do they spend their time?”, “How productive are they?”…
So why is that? Why this urge of knowing what’s going-on behind the scenes? After all, while your guys are delivering and live-up to your expectations, is there really anything for you to worry about? “Am I some kind of big-brother or control freak…? Is this what middle-management is about?”. Scary thoughts indeed… but your anxiety is very natural: here’s why.
As a middle-manager, beside the noble aim of striving to make things better and report on the progress and accomplishments of your team, you may have noticed that your job often consists in anticipating issues and managing risks as early as possible. Also, and even if you’re relishing this day, situations where your team delivers right at first are scarce. As individual contributors, your guys may do an outstanding job, but problems often arise when teamwork is involved. And when crisis arise, people are looking at YOU to resolve conflicts and provide them with guidance. You would ideally need a managerial framework to allow you to fulfill any of the above duties. Some kind of a “toolkit” that would allow you to “sense” and have an accurate appreciation and awareness of what’s happening in your team. Believe it or not, our “management-world” came-up with a couple of good solutions.
Some of these frameworks consist in measuring “feedback” in order to react quickly and adapt to change (e.g Agility), others introduce at their core the concept of measuring “waste” in order to reduce defect to their strict minimum and increase predictability (e.g. Six-Sigma).
Both of them touch on the topic of “metrics”, and explore the gathering, processing, mining of data. Today we’ll focus on a very, very simple approach to measures: Activity Metrics, Performance Metrics and Productivity Metrics. This proposed classification requires some clarification.
“what“, “how well“, “how much“
The goal for “Activity metrics” is to relate “what” your people spend their time on. The goal for “Performance Metrics” is all about “how well” tasks are achieved. The goal for “Productivity Metrics” are about “how much” has been accomplished. You may immediately have noticed one thing in the above. We’re not interested about how much time your guys spend in the office. The metrics we’re talking about aim to measure “efforts“, NOT “time” and there’s a subtle difference between measuring time and efforts. Do you guess where is the demarcation?
Tracking time is performed by measuring minutes/hours. Tracking efforts can also be measured this way, but it doesn’t NEED to be. Confused? Let’s run some scenarios.
Take a clocking-machine. Such hardware generally comes with a software that provides you with a way to measure the time your guys spend in the office, where they are anytime during the day. It allows you to manage overtime, sickness days, vacations and various other administrative duties. As valuable as this is for your role of middle-manager, all this will not help you much in knowing what your people spent their time on, how well they achieved their tasks or how much as been accomplished today.
Now take an effort-tracking system. Such system generally comes with a software that provides you with a clear idea of what your guys are working-on, an idea of the efforts your guys spend on a given work-assignment. It allows you to monitor how busy things are, capture the efforts spent in your book and bill them back to your Customers. You can measure efforts in hours/minutes, cups of coffees or glass of wines… a measure dear to our hearts here at Another Kettle of Fish 
.
But at the end of the day, the “consumer” of your metrics must get something out of it. And that’s the key. As a middle-manager, you have first to ask yourself this one question: “who’s the audience of the metrics I’ll produce?”.
Depending of the audience, you may want your metrics to reflect either the intensity, complexity or length of the efforts undertook by your team. For example your Financial Controller maybe interested in a translation of your Activity Metrics in hours/day or dollars in association with a unit-cost. Your Team maybe interested in a translation of your Activity Metrics in the type of activity they spend the most of their time in (communications, construction, design, planning etc.). Your Project Managers maybe interested in a translation of your Productivity Metrics in number of Changes or Defects. Your Manager maybe interested in a translation of your Performance Metrics in the variation between estimated costs and actual costs.
… using Metrics, you can “manage with of force of facts” …
So you get it by now, half of the answer in defining and justifying to yourself (and your team) why you need to measure efforts and produce metrics, is by caring about your audience. Share your metrics with your audience. Explain your audience what’s in it for them. Show you care. They will in turn help you to fine-tune your results, increase their accuracy and make your reports more meaningful. When you prove the value of measuring and producing metrics, these of a burden to collect and appear less like an “accountant exercise”.
Using metrics, you can manage with the force of facts; to justify the creation of new jobs, learn how not to burn-down your people, to detect issues before they arise, to learn to predict crisis situations, to highlight dysfunctions in your organization… the list goes on and on… It well worth the effort but requires a clarification of your goals, with yourself… and eventually your team.
So you may have guessed already that you will not get to this point by asking your guys to enter that they spend 8 hours working everyday on a spreadsheet or a piece of paper… This discussion is for another time, so stay tuned for a follow-up entry. Good luck in your endeavors.
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