Measuring and Managing Performance in Organizations

Chapter Nineteen. A Difficult But Solvable Problem

I once presented some of the ideas in this book to a group that had just been assembled to develop a software measurement system for a large organization. The group’s members had been carefully selected. They were some of the organization’s brightest and most energetic people, and many had software measurement experience.

These people listened attentively and often nodded knowingly as I spoke of dysfunction and its causes. But, as I enumerated the difficulties of the measurement problem, I sensed that my audience was becoming uneasy. Faces seemed to be darkening. Finally, while I was analyzing a particularly spectacular example of dysfunction, one person could contain his growing discomfort no ...