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What about yesterday's clue ? Did you post the answer ?
~RaGE();
I think words like 'destiny' are a way of trying to find order where none exists. - Christian Graus
Entropy isn't what is used to.
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Pete's It's All About The Choice Of Music Of The Day.
Enjoy[^]
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Pete O'Hanlon wrote: PIAATCOMOTD
That must be for Griff - The rest of us don't understand Welsh... 
Anything that is unrelated to elephants is irrelephant
Anonymous
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The problem with quotes on the internet is that you can never tell if they're genuine
Winston Churchill, 1944
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I'd just like a chance to prove that money can't make me happy.
Me, all the time
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Indeed[^].
"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined."
- Homer
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I have worked, mainly in IT, for 35+ years.
In that time I have had a lot of jobs, everything from small one-man businesses to large multinationals, from government to entertainment.
In many of those positions, it was deemed necessary to have KPIs (Key Performance Indicators).
Some companies took it more seriously than others, some provided them, some I had to provide to them, and then justify.
All, without any exception whatsoever, were a complete and utter waste of my time.
Everyone I have spoken to says the same thing. I have never met anyone, with the exception of HR personnel, who believe KPIs (certainly in the software development industry) to be a good thing.
So I thought I'd ask you jolly Loungers - Any positive experiences of using KPIs?
(obviously the reason for this post is that the company I am now working for have decided that we need to develop some KPIs for the devs. I'm clinging to the hope that there's a reason beyond the fact that they just hired a new HR person.)
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I would be the first to agree with you..The company currently I am working have provided with a set of KPIs which are totally bu** sh*t and are not at all quanitifiable..I am not sure how this crap is being used to evaluate the performance of a employee....
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The point is the KPIs not measurable...and it does not provide a meaning to the work we currently do...
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Atleast last time they had given some KPIs that can be quantified..but this time its serious sh*t...no idea who framed it...but its total sh*t!!!
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They are best used for witch-hunt purposes...
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But, surely, management wouldn't want to ... oh! Wait!
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I know development process bashing is very popular... but KPIs (or more generally measurements) are an essential tool for process improvement in a large organisation. In my experience, the main problem in the implementation is that the people they are made up for do not have the competence to understand them, and to derive something useful for the organisation (let alone to define what they exactly need to manage).
~RaGE();
I think words like 'destiny' are a way of trying to find order where none exists. - Christian Graus
Entropy isn't what is used to.
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KPI at least implies goals of some description, as the development goals are changed at least once a quarter, by management and is seems arbitrarily I don't see how these can apply here.
Having said that all the perms have stringent HR requirements to set, achieve and report on KPIs, I do wonder what the poor bastards do with them. As a contractor HR seem to be happy to ignore me as they can simply not renew the contract if they are not happy, I've been here 10 years  .
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity
RAH
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Well, it depends on what kind of KPIs we are talking about...
Good KPIs should:
1. say something useful
2. should mean something
3. be automated
4. show status of process not performance of single person.
So, KPIs like: lines of code/day, closed user stories, issued resolved, bugs reopened, etc. are not good KPIs. Why? They say nothing meaningful.
But they are quite easy to maintain. 
Recently after a year of research I came up with these KPIs for SCRUM process:
1. WIN/LOSE - are we under or over burndown target today?
2. DISCIPLINE - are "completed" hours reported daily in amount matching capacity?
3. ESTIMATION - hours estimated/hours total
4. PLANNING - do we have enough tasks (hours) planned to fill the capacity?
All data is pulled from TFS - there is no extra time required to complete the "dashboard".
These KPIs will be shown as total - sum for whole team.
As SCRUM master I monitor also these KPIs for individual developers - to see for example who exactly is failing with disciplined reporting.
Other KPIs are just for me - for example PLANNING: if this is red, this usually means the Product Owner failed to deliver stories, not that one of team members failed to do something.
And finally - HR does not look at the KPIs. I look at them and decide case by case what to do to correct the situation.
HR look at the yearly performance review made by superiors, where the main factor is not KPIs but the completion of personal goals....
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That's the thing, isn't it? You're 'managing' the team by making yourself aware of the project situation - that doesn't require each team member to even be aware of the KPIs - because as a good man-manager, you will make them aware of their expectations and regularly keep them notified if they are meeting them or not - doesn't need a 6 page form to do that!
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We have them presented at our monthly meeting but mostly it's support related such as which customers are in the top 10 of asking for help they're not entitled to. The results are not overly memorable but do give an interesting fly-by who the villains of the last month have been. We don't have many in the line of development so we're generally left to get on with things.
I'd not be happy having to do them just to satiate the pointless demands of HR.
If there is one thing more dangerous than getting between a bear and her cubs it's getting between my wife and her chocolate.
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There is a desire to measure everything in the world, to put a figure on quality and show it in a nice graph.
I blame computers for making it so easy to do such things.
All this performance measuring crap is unnecessary and counter-productive if you have good managers you can trust.
In most places managers have no real skill for the job, or desire for it beyond more money.
Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them.
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chriselst wrote: f you have good managers
exactly my POV. When I managed a team of devs, I knew what they were working on, how long I estimated it would take, and whether they were slacking off or working hard. I also knew how many kids they had, what their birthdays were, what their partner did etc.
I took an interest, and I cared. When it got to annual review time, they knew whether they had been doing well or not (they were always doing pretty well, frankly) and we didn't need graphs and charts because we f***ing well spoke to each other!
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Performance metrics can be useful if you can easily define and measure a meaningful definition of 'performance'. That's generally not true in software development (and some metrics, like lines of code or number of issues solved, actively lead to bad code or bad development practice).
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Couldn't agree more. 
"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse
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Just yesterday, I went through my annual self-assessment thingie and marked myself as expert at everything...so they'll leave me the ferk alone for another year, rather than plop out a list of "classes" I would need to take to improve myself.
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When I read the clue, "one unlikely to bring home the bacon", I'm thinking of a team/someone who always lose.
Unfortunately, the answer is vegan..
Hmmmn.. I didn't expect that one. 
Don't mind those people who say you're not HOT. At least you know you're COOL.
I'm not afraid of falling, I'm afraid of the sudden stop at the end of the fall! - Richard Andrew x64
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Bacon is the only cure for vegetarianism.
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Obscurum per obscurius.
Ad astra per alas porci.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur .
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