ASQ Calgary Events
Lessons Learned Using Metrics - Are your Metrics Dumb or Smart?
Event Description
Collecting and reporting effective metrics can be a tricky business. Einstein captured it well when he noted "Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted".Software projects have a history of measuring irrelevant and even counter-productive progress tracking metrics. The "Hawthorne Effect" should teach us that we will influence what we measure, yet companies continue to overtly track things like hours worked and lines of code written, unaware that they send the message of valuing long hours over results, and discourage simplifications and healthy refactoring. Quite often the metrics we want to track are intangible and subjective and so people tend to shy away from them.
More fundamentally, why are we even tracking these metrics? Is it to report on what has already occurred or help steer our future course? Often an imperfect view of the future is more useful than a perfect view of the past. In the real world, rear-view mirrors are much smaller than windshields for good reason, yet the accuracy of hind-sight and our attraction to certainty often creates too much of an emphasis on lagging, already occurred measurements compared to leading metrics. So we get fancy graphs of project spend and defect rates, but no better insights into what we should be doing differently in order to meet our goal.
In this presentation Mike will review many common project metrics and explain why they are largely misguided and counter productive. An alternative set of "Design Factory" metrics will be presented that are "simple and relevant to the true project goal", these metrics leverage the Hawthorne effect and focus on leading metrics to support smarter decision making.
Meeting Sponsors: Integritas Solutions Inc.
and P2 Energy Solutions
Speaker(s):
Sabina Fabbian
Mike Griffiths is a project manager, consultant and trainer specializing in effective project management. Mike was involved in the creation of DSDM in 1994 and has been using agile methods (Scrum, FDD, XP and DSDM) for the last 16 years. He is active in both the agile project management community and traditional PMI-based circles. He served on the board of the Agile Alliance and the Agile Project Leadership Network (APLN), he was a contributing reviewer to the PMBOK v3 Guide and is a trainer for the PMI SeminarsWorld program. He maintains the award winning leadership and agile project management blog at www.LeadingAnswers.com.
When:
Date: February 16, 2010
Start Time: 12:00 PM
Event Duration: 1 hours
Cost:
Contact:
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The Software Quality Discussion Group will, once again, be meeting on the 3rd Tuesday of every month from September through May. All meetings will be held in the 2nd floor XCHANGE Conference Center (also accessible from the +15) of the Standard Life Building at 5th Avenue and 6th Street S.W. The meeting time is from noon to 1:00 p.m. The meetings start at 12:00 p.m. SHARP, so please be on time. Refreshments and a light lunch are provided by our meeting sponsor(s). Remember that all sessions are free but we still require advance registration by RSVP.
The theme for the 2009/2010 season is Lessons Learned in Software Quality and Testing.
Where:
Standard Life Building
639 5 Ave SW
Calgary, AB T2P 0M9
Event Room: 2nd flr XCHANGE Conference Center
Accessible from the +15.
