Reply To: Lets nuke the computer whiz. . .

In another thread I mentioned the IT phrase “metrics.” What are metrics? It’s any measurement to stuff on the computer (in IT lingo, at least). One measure of computer users is how many bytes/files do they create in some unit of time.

I had a program that was grafted to the End command that recorded the time-in-drawing, the file size, the drafter id, time and date. After a while of recording the data, I had enough to indicate some trends on what users were doing. Since I made no measure of the “difficulty” of the project, or of the day of the week, those differences generally tended to average themselves out.

Sounds good, right? Management then wanted to extrapolate how many minutes a certain amount of work took to create a “reward/punishment” line of performance. I said I couldn’t do that. That the data just indicated that process X took about a half hour, plus or minus 15 minutes; that process B took about an hour, etc. So, you have to be carefull with metrics, especially around people with no real background in process efficiency. (A 10 man-hour job cannot be achieved by 5 people in half the time–a logic that escapes far too many; same as torquing a nut twice to 20 foot-pounds is not the same as once to 40.)

I find this ‘metrics’ approach to CAD use, has been promoted by management far too long and too much now…. it really doesn’t make any sense.