Re: and instead start working the 'Metric'.
I've seen a number of cringe-worthy examples of metrics introduced to improve a process that actually ended up making the situation worse.
One of my favourites was a First Time Yield (FTY) metric added to a checking process that was intended to shorten the average time the process took end-to-end. The intention being that if the checks were successful the first time then it elminated the time necessary to go back and correct the problems that failed the checks.
What actually happened was that the supplier to which the metric was applied decided to replicate and re-implement the checking process, effectively to pre-check the checking process. This was done specifically to raise the FTY returned on the customers checking process.
The customer was quite happy that the FTY was increased within their checking process, and I'm sure that some Mangler got a pat on the back and a bonus for the idea.
But what was actually happening was that the bulk of the time in the end-to-end checking process had been pushed upstream to the supplier, out of sight of the customer. And the true end-to-end time for the checking process actually became greater than it had been before the metric was introduced.
I do remember that the supplier then introduced a FTY metric to their system, with which they could 'encourage' their subcontractors to 'improve' their checking, to reduce the end-to-end times for their pre-checking process.
I always wondered if the subcontractor then decided to introduce their own pre-pre-checking system to improve their FTY on the suppliers pre-checking system!
And this was how it ended up as turtles all the day down!!!!
Biting the hand that feeds IT
