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Admin
Frist
Had it not been for "but she also made the system more observable", I would have sworn this was about the company I work for.
Edit Admin
You'd like to think that only one level of indirection - gathering information so that they can see where they can improve the metrics - would be simple enough for metrics-driven managers to be able to understand. The fact that it's too complicated for them really explains the overall state of industry.
Admin
Zane must have mistaken the factory for a particularly messy game of Cookie Clicker.
Admin
Reminds me of a workflow "dashboard" (i.e. Excel spreadsheet) requested by an MD that we used in a previous role. These tracked "cases in" versus "cases out", and if the two numbers were the same, then the team was on track.
Of course, there was nothing to indicate whether those numbers referred to the same cases ... 4 cases in and shoved under the carpet + 4 cases finally worked after sitting round for three months = on track.
The MD moved on after a few months. None of his successors looked at the "dashboard", but filling it in was now A Task, so it still got completed for at least two more MDs ...
Edit Admin
So if there's a backlog of cases (seems that there was), and something happens so that N new cases come in and N+M cases are finished (M > 0), the team is not on track???
Edit Admin
"MD" == "Metric Destroyer"?
Edit Admin
Given the reality that even in the absence of changes to the production system the widgets/day or widgets/dollar metric is going to "breath" up & down due to random factors, how does management react to that reality?
Do they panic each day, take credit when it ticks up and issue scathing blame when it ticks down, or ignore the daily numbers completely and only look at the monthly average? I'm sure it'd be interesting to know which it mostly is. And which manager from Zane to the Owner or CEO does what.
Edit Admin
@dpm ref
If that's a serious question, it's almost certainly "Managing Director." In US large companies that's the typical label for the position just below VP (or regional VP) of whatever. In other words, somebody about 4-5 levels removed from the people who actually move the cases.
Edit Admin
Sounds like she should have just deleted the CV system. Zero defects, nothing to count, better metrics!
Admin
Cue Goodhart's law (for those who don't know it: "When a metric becomes a target, it ceases to be a good metric").