Nobody who creates actual products or does actual useful work cares about KPIs. I’ve never heard of a KPI helping someone at the coal face do anything that matters. If you measured eyerolls per mention of KPIs, it would be equal to about half of the number of ears that heard that mention.
Do you feel surprised or annoyed by what I am saying? Then I predict you are either not a craftsman who creates technology, or you are a kind of craftsman I have not yet encountered in my decades in the software industry.
I just facilitated a meeting to examine process improvement needs for a medium sized software company. The number of mentions of KPIs in that meeting? Zero. What we did talk about was problems and potential solutions to problems.
Yet a colleague of mine recently encountered a potential client who asked him point blank what sort of KPIs he recommended for managing a software testing effort. He didn’t like the answer. The answer was: none, nothing, snap out of it… the very idea of reducing your organization to a game of managing simplistic metrics is anathema to excellence.
You want to manage your company? Listen to people. Observe the work. Create an environment where people feel that being honest and open with you brings them success. Hire people you respect, then show them respect.
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