Measure Project Productivity and It Will Go Up Posted By : Peter Lenn

Measure productivity and people will produce more. That’s called the Hawthorne Effect. And the impact is more than just psychological. A good, real time metric provides feedback so individuals and teams can better manage their time and improve their processes.



If you are a software or hardware project manager, you know that measuring productivity is a challenge.

• Seemingly equal tasks are not comparable in scope and value

• Individuals have vastly different capacities

• Estimates of work done and time to complete are inaccurate

• People distrust the accuracy and purpose of the measurements



Nevertheless, we and many others are finding it practical to use this Say/Do% as a metric for productivity:



Say/Do% = Number of Assignments that got done x 100

Original Number of Assignments



The beauty of this metric is that it is reasonably accurate, requires almost no administrative time, and doesn’t annoy people with micromanagement. Of course teams can boost their Say/Do% by padding their time estimates, but this hasn’t been a problem.



Tracking Say/Do% is easy. By way of example, I’ll assume you are holding weekly team meetings and using some software tool to list and track assignments, such as MS PROJECT, WORD, or EXCEL. You might simply have Post-Its on a white board.



At the start of each meeting, or just before the meeting, team members check off the assignments from last week that are done or are cancelled. It is then simple to count up the assignments from last week that are done and to compute the Say/Do%. During the meeting managers and team members can ask questions to be sure that assignments reported as done are truly done.



Here’s a tip. Track the Say/Do% for project teams, but not for individuals. This provides sufficient feedback to motivate and evaluate improvements, without exposing individuals to unnecessary and often counterproductive scrutiny.



Case History



The Process Engineering Manager at a large semiconductor company said, “We have just over 200 engineers responsible for continuous process improvement projects, new product introduction projects, and day to day break/fix emergencies. Prior to using a Say/Do% metric there was little correlation between what was assigned in a given week and what got done? Fighting fires trumped projects for attention. Two months after starting to use Say/Do%, the percentage of time spent on project work had doubled and their time allocations were completely aligned with our factory priorities.”



Expected Results



With weekly status reporting and Say/Do% tracking, teams climb the learning curve quickly. You can expect to see the ratio go up from a typical 50% to perhaps 80% or more—with increasing output and quality—in about four weeks. This often enables teams to stay on schedule or to recover earlier slippage. The weekly feedback on productivity will also help you catch problems and reinforce process improvements.

Peter Lenn is CEO of The Daniels Group, LLC. More information is available at www.ProjectProMeetings.com. For a quick overview of ways to improve project performance, watch these three short videos: Executive Briefing, why everyone Hates Project Meetings and ProjectPro Meetings Cut Time to Market.