Performance metrics anyone?

[Anonymous]

I'm trying to put together a presentation on how to accurately evaluate
production performance. The environment I'm looking at now is somewhat loose
in that resource allocation is handled weekly by a group of PM's who assign
project hours to individuals. We are currently "hours-oriented" and not
really "task-oriented" so judging how well someone is doing is rather
difficult. "Performance" is pretty much a pass/fail based on "did they go
over the budget or not" which, to me, is not necessarily a fair or accurate
metric.

So I'm just trying to find out if there is some method I'm not seeing that
could be applied to this type of environment to get a more accurate
assessment of individual performance.

Thanks!

[Anonymous]

OK, now I'll see if our thunderstorm will allow me to finish this - this
time. 😉

No pun intended pkirill, but this could be quite the formidable task.

The PM's are Hours-oriented currently, you say. Have you already got them on
the bandwagon headed towards Task-oriented costs? Or is this still ahead of
you?

May I suggest that you start ASAP to get their heads in the proper stadium
parking lot, before you attempt to get them into the ballpark?

Most folks already with this mind-set have significant difficulties
re-orienting themselves from Hours to Tasks. Since Tasks aren't really
measurable on the same scale as Hours.

Tasks need to be nearing the "completion" stage, before they are measured on
most of the Hourly radar screens.

If you follow my line of thinking?

--
Don Reichle
"The only thing worse
than training your staff,
and having them leave is -
not training your staff,
and having them stay."
Courtesy Graphics Solution Providers
----------------------------------------------------------
!! Please discuss whatever we tell you with your SysMgr !!
!! They appreciate staying in the loop 🙂 !!

LDT/CD-2K4
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core 3800+ 2.01GHz
XP-Pro 32bit SP2
2GB RAM
Dual WD800JD Hard Drives - 149GB Nvidia Stripe
Nvidia Quadro FX 1300 128MB
Dual ViewSonic 19-inch VA902b monitors

"The only Constant is Change".


"pkirill" wrote in message
news:5247354@discussion.autodesk.com...
I'm trying to put together a presentation on how to accurately evaluate
production performance. The environment I'm looking at now is somewhat loose
in that resource allocation is handled weekly by a group of PM's who assign
project hours to individuals. We are currently "hours-oriented" and not
really "task-oriented" so judging how well someone is doing is rather
difficult. "Performance" is pretty much a pass/fail based on "did they go
over the budget or not" which, to me, is not necessarily a fair or accurate
metric.

So I'm just trying to find out if there is some method I'm not seeing that
could be applied to this type of environment to get a more accurate
assessment of individual performance.

Thanks!

[Anonymous]

You might want to have a look at my application - Chronos for AutoCAD. I
just uploaded the latest release to my web site.

It may be what you're looking for.

--
Patrick Hughes

Engineered Design Solutions
http://www.engds.com

Chronos: Time Logging for AutoCAD
visit http://www.engds.com/Products/Chronos/Chronos.html


"pkirill" wrote in message
news:5247354@discussion.autodesk.com...
I'm trying to put together a presentation on how to accurately evaluate
production performance. The environment I'm looking at now is somewhat loose
in that resource allocation is handled weekly by a group of PM's who assign
project hours to individuals. We are currently "hours-oriented" and not
really "task-oriented" so judging how well someone is doing is rather
difficult. "Performance" is pretty much a pass/fail based on "did they go
over the budget or not" which, to me, is not necessarily a fair or accurate
metric.

So I'm just trying to find out if there is some method I'm not seeing that
could be applied to this type of environment to get a more accurate
assessment of individual performance.

Thanks!

[Anonymous]

"...this could be quite the formidable task."
So far "formidable" has been an understatement... 🙂

"Have you already got them on the bandwagon headed towards Task-oriented
costs?"

Over the past few months I've been planting the seeds for task-based
management - some logical thought, some credible documentation, some
cajoling, and some heckling... Can't push to hard or they'll balk. I've got
a couple of the more influential coming around, but it is a big boat to
turn. We've gotten far enough that they are starting to realize that just
watching hours doesn't really give them any real answers with regards to
project or individual performance. While I recognized that you have to watch
the hours in order to track the budget, hours don't get a project done.
Completing tasks get a project done. The stupid thing is that every project
is broken down into major tasks when the proposal is created. THEN it's
broken down into more detail by the assigned PM even further when the "lump
sum" of hours are divided up among the disciplines. So the task list and
schedule are there, they just don't use it. I've been asked to present some
options for better monitoring employee performance and "instilling an
ownership attitude" (and you thought the original topic was formidable??) so
I'm planning to parlay it into an attempt to nudge our PM's into better way
of planning projects. (I used to be a PM in another industry so I have some
background - enough to know that the job sucks and I don't want to do it
again...)

In an over simplified nutshell, I believe the "status" of a project is best
measured by a "task complete" vs "hours spent complete" vs "hours budgeted"
formula. This same formula can be applied to the measure of individual
performance. And I agree that makes no sense to "roll up" every task to
measure performance. That's alot like drawing a 10ft line with a 2" ruler.
Instead there need to be certain milestones within a project where things
are rolled up for a progress check.

So my hyposthesis is that you can't realistically measure performance when
your metric just hours spent versus hours budgeted. And that people
generally don't feel a sense of ownership when presented with a bucket of
hours, but do when presented with a task to complete. (again, in a very over
simplified nutshell...) I was hoping someone here could bust me on this
because it's getting tiresome being right all the time... 😉



"Don Reichle" wrote in message
news:5248453@discussion.autodesk.com...
OK, now I'll see if our thunderstorm will allow me to finish this - this
time. 😉

No pun intended pkirill, but this could be quite the formidable task.

The PM's are Hours-oriented currently, you say. Have you already got them on
the bandwagon headed towards Task-oriented costs? Or is this still ahead of
you?

May I suggest that you start ASAP to get their heads in the proper stadium
parking lot, before you attempt to get them into the ballpark?

Most folks already with this mind-set have significant difficulties
re-orienting themselves from Hours to Tasks. Since Tasks aren't really
measurable on the same scale as Hours.

Tasks need to be nearing the "completion" stage, before they are measured on
most of the Hourly radar screens.

If you follow my line of thinking?

--
Don Reichle
"The only thing worse
than training your staff,
and having them leave is -
not training your staff,
and having them stay."
Courtesy Graphics Solution Providers
----------------------------------------------------------
!! Please discuss whatever we tell you with your SysMgr !!
!! They appreciate staying in the loop 🙂 !!

LDT/CD-2K4
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core 3800+ 2.01GHz
XP-Pro 32bit SP2
2GB RAM
Dual WD800JD Hard Drives - 149GB Nvidia Stripe
Nvidia Quadro FX 1300 128MB
Dual ViewSonic 19-inch VA902b monitors

"The only Constant is Change".


"pkirill" wrote in message
news:5247354@discussion.autodesk.com...
I'm trying to put together a presentation on how to accurately evaluate
production performance. The environment I'm looking at now is somewhat loose
in that resource allocation is handled weekly by a group of PM's who assign
project hours to individuals. We are currently "hours-oriented" and not
really "task-oriented" so judging how well someone is doing is rather
difficult. "Performance" is pretty much a pass/fail based on "did they go
over the budget or not" which, to me, is not necessarily a fair or accurate
metric.

So I'm just trying to find out if there is some method I'm not seeing that
could be applied to this type of environment to get a more accurate
assessment of individual performance.

Thanks!

[Anonymous]

Have you yet considered the use of an app along the lines of MS Schedule?

I've utilized it (and others) for this task.

It enables you to Print all or a portion of the schedule.

--
Don Reichle
"The only thing worse
than training your staff,
and having them leave is -
not training your staff,
and having them stay."
Courtesy Graphics Solution Providers
----------------------------------------------------------
!! Please discuss whatever we tell you with your SysMgr !!
!! They appreciate staying in the loop 🙂 !!

LDT/CD-2K4
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core 3800+ 2.01GHz
XP-Pro 32bit SP2
2GB RAM
Dual WD800JD Hard Drives - 149GB Nvidia Stripe
Nvidia Quadro FX 1300 128MB
Dual ViewSonic 19-inch VA902b monitors

"The only Constant is Change".


"pkirill" wrote in message
news:5248757@discussion.autodesk.com...
"...this could be quite the formidable task."
So far "formidable" has been an understatement... 🙂

"Have you already got them on the bandwagon headed towards Task-oriented
costs?"

Over the past few months I've been planting the seeds for task-based
management - some logical thought, some credible documentation, some
cajoling, and some heckling... Can't push to hard or they'll balk. I've got
a couple of the more influential coming around, but it is a big boat to
turn. We've gotten far enough that they are starting to realize that just
watching hours doesn't really give them any real answers with regards to
project or individual performance. While I recognized that you have to watch
the hours in order to track the budget, hours don't get a project done.
Completing tasks get a project done. The stupid thing is that every project
is broken down into major tasks when the proposal is created. THEN it's
broken down into more detail by the assigned PM even further when the "lump
sum" of hours are divided up among the disciplines. So the task list and
schedule are there, they just don't use it. I've been asked to present some
options for better monitoring employee performance and "instilling an
ownership attitude" (and you thought the original topic was formidable??) so
I'm planning to parlay it into an attempt to nudge our PM's into better way
of planning projects. (I used to be a PM in another industry so I have some
background - enough to know that the job sucks and I don't want to do it
again...)

In an over simplified nutshell, I believe the "status" of a project is best
measured by a "task complete" vs "hours spent complete" vs "hours budgeted"
formula. This same formula can be applied to the measure of individual
performance. And I agree that makes no sense to "roll up" every task to
measure performance. That's alot like drawing a 10ft line with a 2" ruler.
Instead there need to be certain milestones within a project where things
are rolled up for a progress check.

So my hyposthesis is that you can't realistically measure performance when
your metric just hours spent versus hours budgeted. And that people
generally don't feel a sense of ownership when presented with a bucket of
hours, but do when presented with a task to complete. (again, in a very over
simplified nutshell...) I was hoping someone here could bust me on this
because it's getting tiresome being right all the time... 😉



"Don Reichle" wrote in message
news:5248453@discussion.autodesk.com...
OK, now I'll see if our thunderstorm will allow me to finish this - this
time. 😉

No pun intended pkirill, but this could be quite the formidable task.

The PM's are Hours-oriented currently, you say. Have you already got them on
the bandwagon headed towards Task-oriented costs? Or is this still ahead of
you?

May I suggest that you start ASAP to get their heads in the proper stadium
parking lot, before you attempt to get them into the ballpark?

Most folks already with this mind-set have significant difficulties
re-orienting themselves from Hours to Tasks. Since Tasks aren't really
measurable on the same scale as Hours.

Tasks need to be nearing the "completion" stage, before they are measured on
most of the Hourly radar screens.

If you follow my line of thinking?

--
Don Reichle
"The only thing worse
than training your staff,
and having them leave is -
not training your staff,
and having them stay."
Courtesy Graphics Solution Providers
----------------------------------------------------------
!! Please discuss whatever we tell you with your SysMgr !!
!! They appreciate staying in the loop 🙂 !!

LDT/CD-2K4
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core 3800+ 2.01GHz
XP-Pro 32bit SP2
2GB RAM
Dual WD800JD Hard Drives - 149GB Nvidia Stripe
Nvidia Quadro FX 1300 128MB
Dual ViewSonic 19-inch VA902b monitors

"The only Constant is Change".


"pkirill" wrote in message
news:5247354@discussion.autodesk.com...
I'm trying to put together a presentation on how to accurately evaluate
production performance. The environment I'm looking at now is somewhat loose
in that resource allocation is handled weekly by a group of PM's who assign
project hours to individuals. We are currently "hours-oriented" and not
really "task-oriented" so judging how well someone is doing is rather
difficult. "Performance" is pretty much a pass/fail based on "did they go
over the budget or not" which, to me, is not necessarily a fair or accurate
metric.

So I'm just trying to find out if there is some method I'm not seeing that
could be applied to this type of environment to get a more accurate
assessment of individual performance.

Thanks!

[Anonymous]

Yup. We went that route a couple years back but decided it require to much
micro management to be used effectively here. Some of our PMs use it for
general scheduling, but mostly we use a series of spreadsheets that tie into
our financial/timesheet software. The spreadsheets are pretty powerful in
that they caclulate a proposed schedule for each project and show neat
charts and graphs of percent complete and project status. But again, based
on hours, not tasks. So as a budget tracking tool, they're great - as a
production tracking tool they suck. MS project is a little too far in the
other direction - great for tracking tasks, not so great for budget (unless
you're willing to put in far more effort than we are since we already have
tools in place.) That being said, we are leaning towards a product called
Deltek Vision which does a good job of incorporating all the aspects and
data surrounding a project.

The biggest problem I have with "tools" are that they they typically aren't
any good unless everyone is using them and using them the same way and to
the same extent. Just like CAD Standards are great as long as everyone uses
them, otherwise all bets are off. The Vision product is nice in that you
can't not use it.

But with regards to performance metrics, do you agree that whether or not
someone has met or exceeded budgeted hours is a poor performance indicator?
And that based soley on budgeted hours, it is not possible to come up with a
decent way to evaluate individual performance?


"Don Reichle" wrote in message
news:5248991@discussion.autodesk.com...
Have you yet considered the use of an app along the lines of MS Schedule?

I've utilized it (and others) for this task.

It enables you to Print all or a portion of the schedule.

--
Don Reichle
"The only thing worse
than training your staff,
and having them leave is -
not training your staff,
and having them stay."
Courtesy Graphics Solution Providers
----------------------------------------------------------
!! Please discuss whatever we tell you with your SysMgr !!
!! They appreciate staying in the loop 🙂 !!

LDT/CD-2K4
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core 3800+ 2.01GHz
XP-Pro 32bit SP2
2GB RAM
Dual WD800JD Hard Drives - 149GB Nvidia Stripe
Nvidia Quadro FX 1300 128MB
Dual ViewSonic 19-inch VA902b monitors

"The only Constant is Change".


"pkirill" wrote in message
news:5248757@discussion.autodesk.com...
"...this could be quite the formidable task."
So far "formidable" has been an understatement... 🙂

"Have you already got them on the bandwagon headed towards Task-oriented
costs?"

Over the past few months I've been planting the seeds for task-based
management - some logical thought, some credible documentation, some
cajoling, and some heckling... Can't push to hard or they'll balk. I've got
a couple of the more influential coming around, but it is a big boat to
turn. We've gotten far enough that they are starting to realize that just
watching hours doesn't really give them any real answers with regards to
project or individual performance. While I recognized that you have to watch
the hours in order to track the budget, hours don't get a project done.
Completing tasks get a project done. The stupid thing is that every project
is broken down into major tasks when the proposal is created. THEN it's
broken down into more detail by the assigned PM even further when the "lump
sum" of hours are divided up among the disciplines. So the task list and
schedule are there, they just don't use it. I've been asked to present some
options for better monitoring employee performance and "instilling an
ownership attitude" (and you thought the original topic was formidable??) so
I'm planning to parlay it into an attempt to nudge our PM's into better way
of planning projects. (I used to be a PM in another industry so I have some
background - enough to know that the job sucks and I don't want to do it
again...)

In an over simplified nutshell, I believe the "status" of a project is best
measured by a "task complete" vs "hours spent complete" vs "hours budgeted"
formula. This same formula can be applied to the measure of individual
performance. And I agree that makes no sense to "roll up" every task to
measure performance. That's alot like drawing a 10ft line with a 2" ruler.
Instead there need to be certain milestones within a project where things
are rolled up for a progress check.

So my hyposthesis is that you can't realistically measure performance when
your metric just hours spent versus hours budgeted. And that people
generally don't feel a sense of ownership when presented with a bucket of
hours, but do when presented with a task to complete. (again, in a very over
simplified nutshell...) I was hoping someone here could bust me on this
because it's getting tiresome being right all the time... 😉



"Don Reichle" wrote in message
news:5248453@discussion.autodesk.com...
OK, now I'll see if our thunderstorm will allow me to finish this - this
time. 😉

No pun intended pkirill, but this could be quite the formidable task.

The PM's are Hours-oriented currently, you say. Have you already got them on
the bandwagon headed towards Task-oriented costs? Or is this still ahead of
you?

May I suggest that you start ASAP to get their heads in the proper stadium
parking lot, before you attempt to get them into the ballpark?

Most folks already with this mind-set have significant difficulties
re-orienting themselves from Hours to Tasks. Since Tasks aren't really
measurable on the same scale as Hours.

Tasks need to be nearing the "completion" stage, before they are measured on
most of the Hourly radar screens.

If you follow my line of thinking?

--
Don Reichle
"The only thing worse
than training your staff,
and having them leave is -
not training your staff,
and having them stay."
Courtesy Graphics Solution Providers
----------------------------------------------------------
!! Please discuss whatever we tell you with your SysMgr !!
!! They appreciate staying in the loop 🙂 !!

LDT/CD-2K4
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core 3800+ 2.01GHz
XP-Pro 32bit SP2
2GB RAM
Dual WD800JD Hard Drives - 149GB Nvidia Stripe
Nvidia Quadro FX 1300 128MB
Dual ViewSonic 19-inch VA902b monitors

"The only Constant is Change".


"pkirill" wrote in message
news:5247354@discussion.autodesk.com...
I'm trying to put together a presentation on how to accurately evaluate
production performance. The environment I'm looking at now is somewhat loose
in that resource allocation is handled weekly by a group of PM's who assign
project hours to individuals. We are currently "hours-oriented" and not
really "task-oriented" so judging how well someone is doing is rather
difficult. "Performance" is pretty much a pass/fail based on "did they go
over the budget or not" which, to me, is not necessarily a fair or accurate
metric.

So I'm just trying to find out if there is some method I'm not seeing that
could be applied to this type of environment to get a more accurate
assessment of individual performance.

Thanks!

[Anonymous]

snip>But with regards to performance metrics, do you agree that whether or
not
someone has met or exceeded budgeted hours is a poor performance indicator?
And that based soley on budgeted hours, it is not possible to come up with a
decent way to evaluate individual performance?

This is where the "rubber meets the road" PK.

This may not be in line with a "direct" answer...

Since there are always ample opportunities for the Undiscovered Country to
show up in any Project, I agree that "budgeted hours" aren't a proper
"tell-tale" for individual(s) performance.

Task-based studies could incorporate Hours along with a myriad of other
factors to determine "performance".

--
Don Reichle
"The only thing worse
than training your staff,
and having them leave is -
not training your staff,
and having them stay."
Courtesy Graphics Solution Providers
----------------------------------------------------------
!! Please discuss whatever we tell you with your SysMgr !!
!! They appreciate staying in the loop 🙂 !!

LDT/CD-2K4
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core 3800+ 2.01GHz
XP-Pro 32bit SP2
2GB RAM
Dual WD800JD Hard Drives - 149GB Nvidia Stripe
Nvidia Quadro FX 1300 128MB
Dual ViewSonic 19-inch VA902b monitors

"The only Constant is Change".


"pkirill" wrote in message
news:5249085@discussion.autodesk.com...
Yup. We went that route a couple years back but decided it require to much
micro management to be used effectively here. Some of our PMs use it for
general scheduling, but mostly we use a series of spreadsheets that tie into
our financial/timesheet software. The spreadsheets are pretty powerful in
that they caclulate a proposed schedule for each project and show neat
charts and graphs of percent complete and project status. But again, based
on hours, not tasks. So as a budget tracking tool, they're great - as a
production tracking tool they suck. MS project is a little too far in the
other direction - great for tracking tasks, not so great for budget (unless
you're willing to put in far more effort than we are since we already have
tools in place.) That being said, we are leaning towards a product called
Deltek Vision which does a good job of incorporating all the aspects and
data surrounding a project.

The biggest problem I have with "tools" are that they they typically aren't
any good unless everyone is using them and using them the same way and to
the same extent. Just like CAD Standards are great as long as everyone uses
them, otherwise all bets are off. The Vision product is nice in that you
can't not use it.

But with regards to performance metrics, do you agree that whether or not
someone has met or exceeded budgeted hours is a poor performance indicator?
And that based soley on budgeted hours, it is not possible to come up with a
decent way to evaluate individual performance?


"Don Reichle" wrote in message
news:5248991@discussion.autodesk.com...
Have you yet considered the use of an app along the lines of MS Schedule?

I've utilized it (and others) for this task.

It enables you to Print all or a portion of the schedule.

--
Don Reichle
"The only thing worse
than training your staff,
and having them leave is -
not training your staff,
and having them stay."
Courtesy Graphics Solution Providers
----------------------------------------------------------
!! Please discuss whatever we tell you with your SysMgr !!
!! They appreciate staying in the loop 🙂 !!

LDT/CD-2K4
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core 3800+ 2.01GHz
XP-Pro 32bit SP2
2GB RAM
Dual WD800JD Hard Drives - 149GB Nvidia Stripe
Nvidia Quadro FX 1300 128MB
Dual ViewSonic 19-inch VA902b monitors

"The only Constant is Change".


"pkirill" wrote in message
news:5248757@discussion.autodesk.com...
"...this could be quite the formidable task."
So far "formidable" has been an understatement... 🙂

"Have you already got them on the bandwagon headed towards Task-oriented
costs?"

Over the past few months I've been planting the seeds for task-based
management - some logical thought, some credible documentation, some
cajoling, and some heckling... Can't push to hard or they'll balk. I've got
a couple of the more influential coming around, but it is a big boat to
turn. We've gotten far enough that they are starting to realize that just
watching hours doesn't really give them any real answers with regards to
project or individual performance. While I recognized that you have to watch
the hours in order to track the budget, hours don't get a project done.
Completing tasks get a project done. The stupid thing is that every project
is broken down into major tasks when the proposal is created. THEN it's
broken down into more detail by the assigned PM even further when the "lump
sum" of hours are divided up among the disciplines. So the task list and
schedule are there, they just don't use it. I've been asked to present some
options for better monitoring employee performance and "instilling an
ownership attitude" (and you thought the original topic was formidable??) so
I'm planning to parlay it into an attempt to nudge our PM's into better way
of planning projects. (I used to be a PM in another industry so I have some
background - enough to know that the job sucks and I don't want to do it
again...)

In an over simplified nutshell, I believe the "status" of a project is best
measured by a "task complete" vs "hours spent complete" vs "hours budgeted"
formula. This same formula can be applied to the measure of individual
performance. And I agree that makes no sense to "roll up" every task to
measure performance. That's alot like drawing a 10ft line with a 2" ruler.
Instead there need to be certain milestones within a project where things
are rolled up for a progress check.

So my hyposthesis is that you can't realistically measure performance when
your metric just hours spent versus hours budgeted. And that people
generally don't feel a sense of ownership when presented with a bucket of
hours, but do when presented with a task to complete. (again, in a very over
simplified nutshell...) I was hoping someone here could bust me on this
because it's getting tiresome being right all the time... 😉



"Don Reichle" wrote in message
news:5248453@discussion.autodesk.com...
OK, now I'll see if our thunderstorm will allow me to finish this - this
time. 😉

No pun intended pkirill, but this could be quite the formidable task.

The PM's are Hours-oriented currently, you say. Have you already got them on
the bandwagon headed towards Task-oriented costs? Or is this still ahead of
you?

May I suggest that you start ASAP to get their heads in the proper stadium
parking lot, before you attempt to get them into the ballpark?

Most folks already with this mind-set have significant difficulties
re-orienting themselves from Hours to Tasks. Since Tasks aren't really
measurable on the same scale as Hours.

Tasks need to be nearing the "completion" stage, before they are measured on
most of the Hourly radar screens.

If you follow my line of thinking?

--
Don Reichle
"The only thing worse
than training your staff,
and having them leave is -
not training your staff,
and having them stay."
Courtesy Graphics Solution Providers
----------------------------------------------------------
!! Please discuss whatever we tell you with your SysMgr !!
!! They appreciate staying in the loop 🙂 !!

LDT/CD-2K4
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core 3800+ 2.01GHz
XP-Pro 32bit SP2
2GB RAM
Dual WD800JD Hard Drives - 149GB Nvidia Stripe
Nvidia Quadro FX 1300 128MB
Dual ViewSonic 19-inch VA902b monitors

"The only Constant is Change".


"pkirill" wrote in message
news:5247354@discussion.autodesk.com...
I'm trying to put together a presentation on how to accurately evaluate
production performance. The environment I'm looking at now is somewhat loose
in that resource allocation is handled weekly by a group of PM's who assign
project hours to individuals. We are currently "hours-oriented" and not
really "task-oriented" so judging how well someone is doing is rather
difficult. "Performance" is pretty much a pass/fail based on "did they go
over the budget or not" which, to me, is not necessarily a fair or accurate
metric.

So I'm just trying to find out if there is some method I'm not seeing that
could be applied to this type of environment to get a more accurate
assessment of individual performance.

Thanks!

[rculp]

"" again, based on hours, not tasks. So as a budget tracking tool, they're great - as a production tracking tool they ****. MS project is a little too far in the other direction - great for tracking tasks, not so great for budget (unless you're willing to put in far more effort than we are since we already have tools in place.) ""

Making the switch to tasks requires a pretty wide foundation of historical data that quantify the effort using measurable data. By far the easiest data to measure is hours, so using the historical data in place, we can quantify the expected hours expended for any task.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"" But with regards to performance metrics, do you agree that whether or not someone has met or exceeded budgeted hours is a poor performance indicator?
And that based soley on budgeted hours, it is not possible to come up with a decent way to evaluate individual performance?""

Loaded question that leaves out a very important aspect of any effort.

The budget must be based on historical data for similar efforts and clearly defined by scope. Every effort outside that clearly defined scope must be quantified and entered into the mix. Elements outside the scope can range from a client requested change, to failure of hardware, to natural disasters, sabotage, schedule compression, or to a bad design that must be re-worked At every step of the path, the task must be continuously evaluated to control changes in scope and re-quantify those changes for both budget and schedule.

If changes in scope are properly identified, documented, and quantified, then budget target (incl. schedule) is a fair indicator of performance.

[Anonymous]

>>Loaded question that leaves out a very important aspect of any effort.

I asked it that way because that's the way we are currently evaluating. I
agree that it is lacking...

>>If changes in scope are properly identified, documented, and quantified,
>>then budget target (incl. schedule) is a fair indicator of performance.

But this also lacks the aspect of effort. In your reply, you include the
schedule in a budget target. This is not necessarily the case - "hours" do
not always equate to "dates". While "budget hours" drive initial "target
dates" for planning purposes, "actual hours" drive may or may not influence
completion dates. The idea that a schedule can be changed anytime there is a
change in scope is not realistic (at least in the AEC industry). The ground
will be broken when the ground is scheduled to be broken and nothing short
of a natural disaster will change that. That is not to say that scope
creep/change should not be documented and tracked and that these changes
aren't a factor to be considered when considering project performance
against the original budget.

And I don't disagree that this is fair indicator of *project* performance.
But how would you equate that to *individual* performance? Using just budget
hours, how do you quantify who your top performers are?



wrote in message news:5249372@discussion.autodesk.com...
"" again, based on hours, not tasks. So as a budget tracking tool, they're
great - as a production tracking tool they ****. MS project is a little too
far in the other direction - great for tracking tasks, not so great for
budget (unless you're willing to put in far more effort than we are since we
already have tools in place.) ""

Making the switch to tasks requires a pretty wide foundation of historical
data that quantify the effort using measurable data. By far the easiest
data to measure is hours, so using the historical data in place, we can
quantify the expected hours expended for any task.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"" But with regards to performance metrics, do you agree that whether or not
someone has met or exceeded budgeted hours is a poor performance indicator?
And that based soley on budgeted hours, it is not possible to come up with a
decent way to evaluate individual performance?""

Loaded question that leaves out a very important aspect of any effort.

The budget must be based on historical data for similar efforts and clearly
defined by scope. Every effort outside that clearly defined scope must be
quantified and entered into the mix. Elements outside the scope can range
from a client requested change, to failure of hardware, to natural
disasters, sabotage, schedule compression, or to a bad design that must be
re-worked At every step of the path, the task must be continuously
evaluated to control changes in scope and re-quantify those changes for both
budget and schedule.

If changes in scope are properly identified, documented, and quantified,
then budget target (incl. schedule) is a fair indicator of performance.

[rculp]

"" But this also lacks the aspect of effort. In your reply, you include the schedule in a budget target. This is not necessarily the case - "hours" do not always equate to "dates". While "budget hours" drive initial "target dates" for planning purposes, "actual hours" drive may or may not influence completion dates ""

If the Schedule is a week, and the scope increased from 40 hrs to 60 hrs something has to give. Scope changes that result in manhour changes will either effect schedule, or effect cost in premium time charges for overtime. That must be determined and agreed upon prior to executing the change request. If the scope change is being initiated by the client he'll either pay for the change or do without.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"" ground will be broken when the ground is scheduled to be broken and nothing short of a natural disaster will change that. ""

Certainly, but that costs money and someone will pay for it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"" and that these changes aren't a factor to be considered when considering project performance against the original budget. ""

The budget must be adjusted for the changes, unless you work for free. Now we have change order hours that are billed to the client for client requested changes, but we also have hours that we'll eat due to a failure of some kind on our part. Those hours are billed differently, but the changes must be incorporated into the working budget or the historical data for the project has no meaning. If you don't, I guess you'd be right in claiming that it is not a fair indication of production.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"" And I don't disagree that this is fair indicator of *project* performance. But how would you equate that to *individual* performance? Using just budget hours, how do you quantify who your top performers are? ""

Each task within a project is budgeted and scheduled on its own, that's how we develop the overall budget and schedule. The performance of the individual in accomplishing any given task is measured against the budget and schedule for that task, taking into account any factor that may impact that task's budget/schedule.
If it's a 5 hour task and you take a week, you'd better have plenty of documentation to cover the increased cost and impact to schedule. Actually, long before the end of the 5 hours, the design leads better know about the reasons for the delay.

[Anonymous]

You keep introducing "tasks" into the mix. If we were tracking "task
performance" I wouldn't be asking the question in the original post. I'm
assuming that, like me, the idea of NOT tracking or monitoring progress by
task is so inane and foreign that you can't imagine anyone not doing it.

"If the Schedule is a week, and the scope increased from 40 hrs to 60 hrs
something has to give."
It's usually the workday increasing from 8 to 12 hours. If Friday is the
deadline, Friday is the deadline. There is more than one project in the
office and changes to one schedule have a ripple effect throuhg all project
schedules.

"Certainly, but that costs money and someone will pay for it."

Which again, impacts project performance but has no bearing on individual
performance.

"" and that these changes aren't a factor to be considered when considering
project performance against the original budget. ""

The whole sentence was: 'That is NOT to say that scope creep/change ...
[isn't] a factor to be considered when considering project performance
against the original budget.'

"The performance of the individual in accomplishing any given task is
measured against the budget and schedule for that task, taking into account
any factor that may impact that task's budget/schedule. If it's a 5 hour
task and you take a week, you'd better have plenty of documentation to cover
the increased cost and impact to schedule. "

I agree, but again introduces the concept of tracking by task. Currently, if
4 team members are each assigned a 16 hours in a week to work on a project
and one spends 40 hours the project (doing who know what since they were
assigned "hours" and not "specific tasks with hours associated") and the
others don't work on the project at all, at the end of that week the project
appears to be on track - and actually under budget. Not a good indication of
project status and no indication what's really happening on the project,
IMHO.


wrote in message news:5249573@discussion.autodesk.com...
"" But this also lacks the aspect of effort. In your reply, you include the
schedule in a budget target. This is not necessarily the case - "hours" do
not always equate to "dates". While "budget hours" drive initial "target
dates" for planning purposes, "actual hours" drive may or may not influence
completion dates ""

If the Schedule is a week, and the scope increased from 40 hrs to 60 hrs
something has to give. Scope changes that result in manhour changes will
either effect schedule, or effect cost in premium time charges for overtime.
That must be determined and agreed upon prior to executing the change
request. If the scope change is being initiated by the client he'll either
pay for the change or do without.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"" ground will be broken when the ground is scheduled to be broken and
nothing short of a natural disaster will change that. ""

Certainly, but that costs money and someone will pay for it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"" and that these changes aren't a factor to be considered when considering
project performance against the original budget. ""

The budget must be adjusted for the changes, unless you work for free. Now
we have change order hours that are billed to the client for client
requested changes, but we also have hours that we'll eat due to a failure of
some kind on our part. Those hours are billed differently, but the changes
must be incorporated into the working budget or the historical data for the
project has no meaning. If you don't, I guess you'd be right in claiming
that it is not a fair indication of production.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"" And I don't disagree that this is fair indicator of *project*
performance. But how would you equate that to *individual* performance?
Using just budget hours, how do you quantify who your top performers are? ""

Each task within a project is budgeted and scheduled on its own, that's how
we develop the overall budget and schedule. The performance of the
individual in accomplishing any given task is measured against the budget
and schedule for that task, taking into account any factor that may impact
that task's budget/schedule.
If it's a 5 hour task and you take a week, you'd better have plenty of
documentation to cover the increased cost and impact to schedule. Actually,
long before the end of the 5 hours, the design leads better know about the
reasons for the delay.

[Anonymous]

pkirill wrote:
> "task-oriented"

just curious...

for those who have implemented a 'task-oriented' performance tracking
system,
could you give an example of the tasks that you're tracking?
I'm curious how 'granular' the time tracking categories need to be for this
to be effective, or even usable.

for example,
I've worked in offices where you simply track your hours by project/phase;
and no further categorization for Tasks - all the time is phase-based vs.
task based.
Obviously, this equates to a very course assesment; even by an
'hourly-oriented' standard.

In other offices, I've tracked hours by project/phase/task; and it's here
that I'm interested in others' level of granularity, and concept for Task
categories. For example, I may engage in a little 'space planning' (design
work), and then I (or someone else) implements the Design intent in a
Drawing (documentation work), and then later the Drawing is plotted,
packaged, and sent to a Client (reproduction & distribution work). These
identifiable 'Tasks' are trackable, if recorded and task-coded properly. But
this doesn't cover things like *performance*. The hours I spent on the
'Space Planning' Task are measurable, but against what standard to you
compare it to, to asses performance? I mean, we're not churning out widgets
here, each project is unique in it's own way - inventing the wheel to some
extent each time. That's what 'custom design' is. There's a very
unpredictible probability of various influences that can affect the Design
process. And let's face it - sometimes you 'nail it' on the first go-'round,
and sometimes you don't. The individual who usually requires an evolution of
design iterations, is not necessarily your weakest Designer; and in fact may
be your most valuable one. And this individual's meticulous thought process
might pay dividends in later phases of the project, where his/her designs
'work' and don't require re-design in the CD phase, where the "quick-hitter"
might cost you down the line...

So, I guess what I'm asking is: How does one quantify *design* performance?
Or is this discussion, purely a means to pick out the quickest and most
efficient Production Drafters? Even to use this as a means to establish how
long it *should* take a Draftsperson to churn out a Sheet full of 1-1/2" and
3" scale section details seems a bit broad-stroked. There's too many
variables.

Has anyone implemented a task-based performance assesment system in a
design-oriented firm that actually works? I envision a lot of time spent
dynamically tweaking the data for a project as it evolves, and in the end
you have a nice, accurate record that has little or no use.

Please elighten me.

It seems to me that task-based time tracking has it's merits in trying to
establish %'s of total project time you've spent on certain task categories,
and maybe to expose certain efficiency weaknesses in your Workflow to
concentrate upon imporoving.

[rculp]

"" You keep introducing "tasks" into the mix. If we were tracking "task performance" I wouldn't be asking the question in the original post. I'm assuming that, like me, the idea of NOT tracking or monitoring progress by task is so inane and foreign that you can't imagine anyone not doing it. ""

There is nothing to measure if you're not measuring the hours against a "task" of some kind. Measurements require at least two elements; the measuring device and something to measure. In this case that would be hours against a task of some kind. It could very well be the entire project is viewed as a task. That would make it very difficult to pin-point the areas that may be responsible for failure/success, but the evaluation of the performance for the project as a whole based on this factor would still be fair. That is assuming all aspects that effect/contribute to the completion of the project are properly documented and included in the process.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

<"""It's usually the workday increasing from 8 to 12 hours.""">

""Which again, impacts project performance but has no bearing on individual performance.""

Increasing workday hours from 8 to 12 is a major impact on individual performance. On average there is a marked decrease in average hourly productivity starting somewhere in the 10th hour by as much as 50% in some cases. (In some very rare cases the individual hourly performance actually increases as the day gets longer such that their best performance occurs in the 11th, 12th even 13th hours). This difference in performance must be recognized and worked into the schedule and budget because an 80 hr project accomplished over 2 weeks may require 90 or more hours to complete in one week. Knowing this and the usual response of the individual to such pressures allows the evaluation of individual performance to remain valid.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"" Currently, if 4 team members are each assigned a 16 hours in a week to work on a project and one spends 40 hours the project (doing who know what since they were assigned "hours" and not "specific tasks with hours associated") and the others don't work on the project at all, at the end of that week the project appears to be on track - and actually under budget. Not a good indication of project status and no indication what's really happening on the project, IMHO.""

If that is the scenario, then the only evaluation that will be valid, will be the performance of the "team" at the completion of the project. But if that truly is the scenario, I can make an evaluation of that management that is probably pretty accurate; POOR... not just poor, but p*** poor, not only a disservice to the client and the project, but the individual team members as well. Such mismanagement will result in cost over-runs, schedule slippage, unhappy clients and unhappy employees.

Under that scenario, you can not claim ahead of schedule because you can not forecast an accurate percentage complete for the project. Message was edited by: Randy Culp

[Anonymous]

"There is nothing to measure if you're not measuring the hours against a
"task" of some kind. "

THAT's my point! Although the argument I hear from some of our PM's is that
there are two elements: the device is the project budget (hours being the
unit of measure) and the thing to measure is hours applied to the budget
(via timesheets). So by this logic, if a 5 week project has 1000 hours in
the budget and after a week 100 hours are charged to it, then the project is
10% complete and underbudget. If after the second week there are a total of
300 hours charged, then it's 30% complete and under budget. If after the 4th
week, there are 900 hours charged then it's 90% complete but over budget...
It's silly.

"""Which again, impacts project performance but has no bearing on individual
performance."""
Should read: "... no bearing on the evaluation of individual performance." I
know that overtime is subject to dimishining returns, the longer it goes the
less productivity...

"Increasing workday hours from 8 to 12 is a major impact on individual
performance. "

I agree. But how do you know if you're only tracking by hours and not by
task?



wrote in message news:5250608@discussion.autodesk.com...
"" You keep introducing "tasks" into the mix. If we were tracking "task
performance" I wouldn't be asking the question in the original post. I'm
assuming that, like me, the idea of NOT tracking or monitoring progress by
task is so inane and foreign that you can't imagine anyone not doing it. ""

There is nothing to measure if you're not measuring the hours against a
"task" of some kind. Measurements require at least two elements; the
measuring device and something to measure. In this case that would be hours
against a task of some kind. It could very well be the entire project is
viewed as a task. That would make it very difficult to pin-point the areas
that may be responsible for failure/success, but the evaluation of the
performance for the project as a whole based on this factor would still be
fair. That is assuming all aspects that effect/contribute to the completion
of the project are properly documented and included in the process.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

<"""It's usually the workday increasing from 8 to 12 hours.""">

""Which again, impacts project performance but has no bearing on individual
performance.""

Increasing workday hours from 8 to 12 is a major impact on individual
performance. On average there is a marked decrease in average hourly
productivity starting somewhere in the 10th hour by as much as 50% in some
cases. (In some very rare cases the individual hourly performance actually
increases as the day gets longer such that their best performance occurs in
the 11th, 12th even 13th hours). This difference in performance must be
recognized and worked into the schedule and budget because an 80 hr project
accomplished over 2 weeks may require 90 or more hours to complete in one
week. Knowing this and the usual response of the individual to such
pressures allows the evaluation of individual performance to remain valid.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"" Currently, if 4 team members are each assigned a 16 hours in a week to
work on a project and one spends 40 hours the project (doing who know what
since they were assigned "hours" and not "specific tasks with hours
associated") and the others don't work on the project at all, at the end of
that week the project appears to be on track - and actually under budget.
Not a good indication of project status and no indication what's really
happening on the project, IMHO.""

If that is the scenario, then the only evaluation that will be valid, will
be the performance of the "team" at the completion of the project. But if
that truly is the scenario, I can make an evaluation of that management that
is probably pretty accurate; POOR... not just poor, but p*** poor, not only
a disservice to the client and the project, but the individual team members
as well. Such mismanagement will result in cost over-runs, schedule
slippage, unhappy clients and unhappy employees.

[rculp]

"" It's silly. ""

It's worse than silly, its inaccurate. It is only a measure of the number of hours burned and has nothing at all to do with productivity or completion of project. These guys are engineers?? What kind, sanitation?? or Architectural??

By their logic, on your 1000hr project, you could put 10 people on the project working 10 hours per day for 10 days and the project is 100% complete without ever drawing the first line. Again, p*** poor management.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

<"""Which again, impacts project performance but has no bearing on individual
performance."""
Should read: "... no bearing on the evaluation of individual performance." "">

We evaluate the individual on how he/she performs under the pressure of an 80 hr week. There are some we just don't ask to work the extra time because they can not produce during the overtime periods, they do fine for 40 hrs. Still others produce much better overall if we have them working 5 10's, then a few others will really shine at 70 hrs. The latter are much more valuable to us than the former.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"" ... how do you know if you're only tracking by hours and not by task? ""

You're not tracking "BY" hours, you're merely tracking hours. "Yep, there goes one, woot, there goes another."

[Anonymous]

What "credible research" is there on task-based costs? I'm curious to see more about the topic.

[jeffrossel]

Generally the people who don't do the work most often completely under estimate the amount of time that is required. They are also the people that brow beat you for the number of hours required. I just completed a complex project that required over 550 cad drawings and several hundred off the shelf components to be modeled. This took an extraordinary amount of effort and collaboration. I got nothing but bitching from people that had absolutely no idea of the technical requirements nor the size of the project.

I'll probably take it up the *** during the review period.