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Mike, I appreciate your perspective but your suspicions are correct, there are management reasons of greater importance than measuring performance to consider. One of them is to benchmark results in order to justify more staff by monitoring demand trends. Further, your instincts are correct when it comes to measuring factors. It is important to give weight to the work in order to present the proper perspective. A novice, for example, is not going to be as productive as an expert. This is called factoring.
Once the data is normalized in this manner, workload balancing and trend analysis can be done. In a small shop where justifications are a wink and a nod, you may be right that productivity formulas are overkill. I have seen many managers sweat when their immeidate management chain changed and the new guy is looking for a zero-based budget... in other words, justify your continued existence.
JoAnn Hackos teaches a class on Project Management in which she supplies the book I mentioned in my prior posting and some estimating/factoring templates. This is actually offered through Influent.
>>> Mike Starr <mike -dot- starr -at- PLATINUM -dot- COM> 12/02/98 10:58am >>>
Well, I'm a lone writer in my office and have never been in a situation where my manager felt it was necessary to quantify productivity. I question . . .
