Industry

In a recent article, about high performance teams, Carl Wiese and Ron Ricci - both senior leaders at Cisco - listed some characteristics, one of which was:

“Everyone understands both team and individual performance goals and knows what is expected.”

Sales teams have known this for years. Software development is very different, but accountability still has an important role to play.

Academic studies

The American Psychological Asociation published a report called “Does Monitoring Goal Progress Promote Goal Attainment? A Meta-Analysis of the Experimental Evidence”. The authors conclusion included:

“progress monitoring has a robust effect on goal attainment”

furthermore they also noted that they had

“found that monitoring progress in public and physically recording progress had larger effects on goal attainment than monitoring that was done in private and not recorded.”

See the whole forest

When you’re buried in the intricate detail, it’s hard to think about the big picture. Metrics help you by mapping the overall picture down to manageable size.

Good teams include people whose job is to keep an eye on the big picture who work hand-in-hand with those whose focus is elsewhere. However, in the drive to meet deadlines, it’s all too easy for everyone to stay immersed in the technical detail, only coming up for air to watch the launch date whoosh past.

If you experience this problem, metrics are your friend. In particular, time series and trend metrics are important for quickly regaining sight of overall progress. Having this data at your fingertips allows your mind to assess overall progress using the same modes of thinking as you use for the lower level tasks, which eases the strain associated with shifting mindsets while handling heavy workloads.

A good analogy is that of being unable to “see the forest for the trees”. Deep in the midst of the trees, metrics provide you with a view of the forest that doesn’t require you to leave it.