When I hear words like "measuring is too much work, we can't pay back the effort," the first thought is "the person really doesn't want to be held accountable.
Measuring your performance in any way, connects the outcome with the effort. Measuring exposes weakness in thought processes. "What the unit of measure?" when someone suggests they can improve you lot in life.
- Loose weight - how much? Over what period of time? At what other cost to your health?
- Improve project performance - in what unit of measure?
- Reduce complexity - in what unit of measure? From what baseline? At what cost to other areas of the domain?
You get the point. Anyone making any kind of statement in the absence of a unit of measure is trying o sell you something that probably can't be quantified.
But there is more to this measurement issue. The classic is a headline in our local paper last year
Exxon/Mobil makes $40B in 2007.
First the paper is referred to as the "Daily Comrade" by many. So announcing $40B in income makes great news. Of course this $40B was on $404B in sales for a net profit margin of 10%. Not too bad. WalMart does 3.5%, Intel 18.7%, and GE 13.7%. But overall pretty good.
So when measure something, it needs to be relative to some basis. But more importantly, measuring adds value when the business you're in is risky - say project management. Risks exist in every project. They are unavoidable. Managing risk is what project managers do. "Manging risk is how adults manage projects."
Measuring project performance really means measuring cost, schedule and technical performance. Measuring in some way, any way. In the absence of measurements, you simply can't tell if you're making progress. Some in the project management community have conjectured that measurements of progress can't be made in any meaningful way. "Counting the uncountable" or "since project work in implicit, we can't measure this."
This of course is nonsense. Projects produce deliverables. Deliverables are tangible. The work effort and materials needed to produce those deliverables are tangible. Connecting work effort, cost, schedule and the resulting deliverables into a measurement system is the basis of any business value equation.
There are difficulties in measuring. But what project managers must do is address these difficulties head on.
Holding people accountable for their actions and outcomes is a primary role of a project manager.
