I was tracking the wrong number for our team's output for a year.

We were looking at total tasks closed each week, which always looked good. A new hire asked me last month why we were counting a 5-minute email the same as a 3-day project. I pulled the data and saw 70% of our 'output' was small, quick items. Now we weight tasks by estimated effort. How do you all measure real productivity without overcomplicating it?

2 comments

2 Comments

barbaramorgan3d ago

That's a solid point from @ryan_flores about keeping it simple. We had to do the same thing when we switched to story points for our dev work. We started with just three buckets: small (1 point), medium (3), and large (5). It stopped the number chasing and actually showed who was taking on complex work. The trick was getting the whole team to agree on what fit in each bucket during planning.

ryan_flores3d ago

My buddy had a similar thing happen at his old job. They were just counting support tickets closed, so the team would grab a bunch of easy ones to pad the numbers. It looked great on paper but the big, gnarly problems never got touched. They switched to a points system based on how hard the ticket was, kind of like your effort weighting. It was messy at first but after a month it actually showed who was really moving things forward. The key was keeping the point categories super simple so people wouldn't argue about them all day.