It seems like the main problem with any productivity metric, is that once you tell your workers what the metric is, it will be gamed.
However if you collect the metrics in secret, and only use them as a guide for where productivity could be improved, it seems they could be more useful.
I wonder if any engineering managers are doing something like that?
I guess it would be hard to scale to a large organization, as the you would need to share the metrics with the line managers.
I suspect that many quietly effective employees are doing something like that, and that it is a smart way to increase the performance of yourself and your team.
I also suspect that it is not possible to share the metrics, and that you would need to do "parallel construction" to justify your decisions without revealing your real methodology.
However if you collect the metrics in secret, and only use them as a guide for where productivity could be improved, it seems they could be more useful.
I wonder if any engineering managers are doing something like that?
I guess it would be hard to scale to a large organization, as the you would need to share the metrics with the line managers.