program selection system

Metrics can backfire. They are useful for both self assessment and retrospectives. But experience since 2002 with 80 teams at IBM has shown it’s not just a matter of finding the right metrics. It’s important to use them properly, and avoid common pitfalls, including bloated metrics, the evil scorecard, lessons forgotten, forcing process, and inconsistent sharing. Turning assessments into “un-assessments” returns power back to the team. Instead of defining more metrics, this paper tells how not to misuse them.

__Software teams confront what works and what doesn’t throughout every project. Where does their hard-earned experience go?

Great software comes from getting the best ideas into the product. Jim McCarthy, who led the legendary turnaround of the Visual C++ group at Microsoft, left Microsoft in 1996 to create a team dynamics laboratory to figure out how to always create a create a high performace team. His lab has focused on this challenge, and has produced 11 protocols for making unanimous decisions, supporting quality thinking, strengthening design iterations, and incorporating feedback, emotions, nobility, and passion into products. Learn about an entirely new class of tools.