Selecting metrics is difficult. It is difficult because you can end up influencing that which you measure.
People tend, not unreasonably, to do whatever presents them in the best light. Measure someone’s performance as the number of widgets they produce, and they produce more widgets, but without a governing quality measure you could reasonably expect quality to suffer. Add in a quality governed and the number if units produced will drop to that which people can produce and just maintain quality. Pay them more for exceeding the quality criterion and they will eventually reach an optimum point where they produce as many units as they can at a quality they believe optimizes their income. Read the rest of this entry ?
