“Veronica, can’t we have our staff work harder? I walked several times by our Software and Test Engineers’ cubicles yesterday. More than half were reading a newspaper or a magazine, shooting the breeze with colleagues, or perusing an internet site that had nothing to do with meeting our organization’s deadlines. I feel our staff members work at efforts productive to our organization less than half of the time,” said Warren Gates, Vice President of Engineering at Automated Traffic Control (ATC), to his project management office director, Veronica Sinatra.

 

 

“Yet, when their salary reviews occur, everyone tells me the tedious hours they and their staff worked to ensure our traffic flow system dominates the market. We were supposed to have our latest release by the 3rd quarter. Here we are, two-thirds through the 4th quarter, and we have at least two months before releasing our product to our initial test site. We’ve already postponed the initial client training dates three times. What do we have to do to motivate our staff?” asked Warren Gates, Veronica’s boss.

 

“Boss, you know, I’ve been pondering this dilemma for many a moon. I’m pretty sure I know how to solve our problem. I would love to discuss my ideas and plans with you when you have time,” said Veronica.

 

“OK, now is as good a time as any; let’s go to my office,” said Warren.

 

“Let me grab my notes, and I’ll be right there,” responded Veronica. When Veronica returned, she used Warren’s whiteboard to jot the following eight questions:

  1. What is productivity?
  2. Why is productivity important?
  3. Do we need to measure all work activities when assessing productivity?
  4. What are the key ingredients that make staff members maximize their work efforts?
  5. What are the key ingredients that make staff members maximize their work efforts?
  6. How can we improve our staff members’ productivity?
  7. Are there any tools that could help ATC improve staff productivity in the future?
  8. What steps should ATC take to ensure our staff continuously improves their productivity?

 

 

“I think you’ve nailed the questions, Veronica. Let me hear your answers,” said Warren

“All right, let me answer the questions one at a time. Realize that these answers are mine, with a little, actually significant help, from my Google research, discussions with dozens of peers, and sprinkled with a few of my thoughts for each question,” said Veronica.  

“What is productivity? It measures the time a staff member needs to finish a scheduled task relative to the task’s estimated effort. We should use a quality factor to adjust the staff member’s time on specific tasks. The quality factor multiplies the ratio (estimated effort versus actual effort) for task completion. A value of one signifies the quality of the results was as expected, and less than one means the quality is superior to what was expected. A value greater than one implies the quality was inferior to expectations. We use the quality factor to adjust the time spent accomplishing the task. We achieve this by multiplying the expended time for a task by the quality factor. We also should use an enabling factor monthly to adjust an individual’s productivity relative to displayed for those who are team players, mentor teammates, and provide a positive attitude during working hours. Only a portfolio manager can adjust a staff member’s productivity factor based on the quality of their work for a task. A manager recommends a revised quality factor to a portfolio manager for a specific completed task, for which they have management responsibility. We need an expert level in a labor category, such as a software engineer, test engineer, documentation specialist, etc. That way, we can distinguish a novice in a labor category from our foremost guru for that designated labor category.

 

Knowing a staff member’s productivity would help ATC’s managers better use their resources when assigning staff to specific tasks. It would improve management’s ability to make wiser financial decisions when adjusting their staff’s remuneration. I think ten levels for labor categories would suffice,” said Veronica.

 

 

“Excellent analysis and description of productivity, Veronica. I know the importance of productivity. Productivity determines when tasks are complete. When you add a quality measure, it helps ATC determine how the individual performed on their tasks. Wouldn’t it be fantastic to have quantitative data on every staff member’s productivity for every supported labor category? ATC could make far better allocation decisions for their labor resources and, just as important, be a little wiser when ATC adjusts their staff’s salary and bonuses,” said Warren.

“When I first started thinking about what we should measure, all I thought about was projects. I did worry about why projects always seem to fail. Our projects and everyone else’s always cost more than initially estimated and take longer to complete than estimated. Then one night, I had an epiphany. I thought, “why am I so focused on projects?” ATC workers perform tasks not only for projects but also for products and processes. Some people work on processes, some on products, and others on projects. Some work on a combination of two out of the three, if not all three. We must measure each staff member’s performance on all tasks they perform if we want to understand their productivity.

 

I then considered the difference between processes, products, and projects regarding ATC’s staff’s work. We can break down the work of each process, product, and project into a set of tasks. The tasks for all have similar, if not identical, attributes, such as requirements, assigned labor categories, estimated durations, and dependencies.

 

We should not measure performance only on projects; instead, we measure ATC’s staff’s work effort for processes, products, and projects. What happens when an issue exists in a project, product, or process? We create an issue report. How does our staff solve the issue? They perform tasks like all other work for processes, products, and projects that ATC accomplishes.

 

Measuring all the work everyone does is a novel idea. It is not just processes, products, and projects; we also include issues in the organization’s work effort. Just imagine if ATC knew the prioritized order for all current work efforts when prioritizing our work activities. If we know the most productive individuals for each labor category level, assuming we measure everyone’s performance. We could then assign our most productive individuals daily to our most critical tasks,” said Veronica.

 

“Wow, that is interesting, Veronica. I need to ponder that concept and its implementations for a while. How long have you been thinking about ATC’s productivity?” asked Warren.

 

“For approximately a dozen years, but mostly the last year. Trying to solve our dilemma has kept me working more hours than I spent at ATC before the pandemic,” responded Veronica.

 

“Veronica, it is almost 6 PM. Let’s tackle question 3 before we go home. What should we measure to assess a staff member’s productivity?” asked Warren?

 

Veronica responded, “We should measure all the work activities staff members performs for each labor category level the staff member supports. All the work includes any work done on processes, products, projects, and issues. We must measure everything our staff members accomplish during their daily work efforts. Otherwise, it would be an unfair evaluation of their performance.”

 

“What about our sales team?” asked Warren.

 

“Ah, that’s question 4. Sales are an activity where the formula of expended hours versus estimated hours to measure performance makes no sense. ATC should only care about how many sales of our products in terms of profitable revenue the sales staff member contributed. We must use a different measurement set to measure productivity for our sales staff. .

 

There might be other labor categories where we have to use a different productivity measurement set, but I haven’t thought of any at ATC other than sales. For a salesperson, management shouldn’t care if they worked an hour, a hundred hours per week, how many potential clients they visited, how artistic and appealing they were, or how charismatic their presentation was. What ATC should care about is whether they consistently make or exceed their sales quota for the measurement period.

 

Now to question 5, what makes staff members maximize work outputs? I believe Pareto’s law applies to our staff’s overall ATC productivity. It combines experience, emotional intelligence, problem-solving abilities, and work ethic. A small percentage of our team produces the majority of our work output. I think that percentage hovers around twenty percent of our staff and produces 80% of ATC’s productivity. Which leads us to question 6, how do we improve our staff’s productivity, and thus ATC overall productivity,” said Veronica?

 

“You are making great progress, Veronica. Let’s call it a night. I want to think about what we discussed this afternoon and continue the discussion tomorrow in my office,” Warren said.

 

The next day, in Warren’s office, Veronica said, “let’s take the ingredients I mentioned yesterday afternoon that determines productivity one at a time when we discuss how we might improve our staff’s productivity. Here’s a table I created last night listing the productivity ingredients.” Veronica then wrote the table describing the productivity ingredients.

 

Productivity Ingredient Importance
Work Ethic (Drive to Succeed, Fortitude) 10
Emotional Intelligence 7
Problem Solving (Ingenuity) 9
Experience (Technical Know-How) 8
Intelligence 5

 

“All of the assessments are my personal opinion. I’ve used an “Importance” factor relative to how productive is a staff member from my empirical experience, where a value of 1 signifies not critical. In contrast, a value of 4 indicates highly crucial. I haven’t run any scientific studies. Instead, it is my intuitive perceptions from nearly three decades of experience since graduating college and working twenty-five years in the computer and project management industries. Having previous knowledge is a significant blessing in implementing features you’ve already accomplished or like experiences to what you’re about to perform, thus significantly improving your productivity.

 

Emotional intelligence. in my experience, is more essential than intelligence relative to how productive an individual is. Intelligence is a critical contributor to productivity but not the most important. Since everyone that works on technical efforts at ATC has an IQ above 110, I have found IQ isn’t that much a differentiator once your IQ is more than 110 in terms of productivity. Thus, I combined the two with an “Importance Factor” of just one.

 

The second most important factor, in my opinion, is the individual’s ability to solve issues. A high percentage of ATC’s tasks have unique problems, requiring staff members to determine the appropriate course of action to provide a solution. Those ingenious and adept at solving problems are often the most productive team members for their labor categories. The same problem smarts help creative individuals rise to the occasion and contribute to the problem’s solution.

 

An individual’s work ethic, drive to succeed, and fortitude is critical in solving task problems. A staff member’s drive keeps them focused on completing the task. More often than not, thinking about issues after-hours provides stellar, quality solutions. Work ethic and fortitude are probably essential ingredients in solving tasks. Individuals with a positive work ethic and grit consistently continue on the task until they find a solution.

 

Now we’re at one of the most crucial questions, number 6, “how do we improve our staff’s productivity.” Fortunately, there are many ways to improve our company’s productivity. There are a plethora of books on just that topic. I’m going to break this answer into multiple parts, which are:

  • Improving our Staff’s Knowledge èAcquiring new knowledge or improving our methods from experienced, productive individuals on solving common ATC problems in our work efforts will benefit our overall productivity. Having our most productive staff members explain in seminars and lunch meetings how they solved common issues in slightly different forms will help other staff members eliminate wasting significant time accomplishing their work. Our team would be more productive if our staff could readily acquire this know-how to solve the expected hurdles. I’m proposing we have a weekly meeting where our most productive individuals discuss how they solved some complex problems in the past.
  • Measuring è There’s a famous saying, “What gets measured, gets done.” If individuals know you are measuring their performance, they are more apt to perform at a higher level. When people know their performance is a significant factor in their future compensation, they tend to become more focused and productive. We must start measuring everyone’s performance on every task they perform. All of our scheduled tasks have estimated durations. We need to measure the actual time expended versus the estimated time to understand who ATC’s most productive individuals are. We should accumulate the results for each labor category a staff member supports each year.
  • Motivating èThe fact that a staff member knows their performance (productivity) is being measured is often enough motivation to make them more productive. In addition, we should have monthly talks by invited motivational speakers relative to productivity.

 

If management uses productivity statistics relative to each staff member’s supported labor categories as the crucial factor in determining future remuneration and bonuses, then staff members will tend to focus more on improving their productivity, for nearly everyone wants to improve their salary and bonuses.

 

Suppose management uses productivity statistics relative to each staff member’s supported labor categories as the crucial factor in determining future remuneration and bonuses. In that case, staff members tend to focus more on improving their productivity, for nearly everyone wants to improve their salary and bonuses.

 

The question is, are there any tools that can help ATC improve their staff’s productivity? If you’re talking about today, the answer is no. In my Google searches, talking with a few of my colleagues at different organizations, and attending dozens of project management and management conferences and marketing presentations, there do not appear to be any operational tools that directly support improving productivity in the way we have been discussing.

I’ve looked at products such as Microsoft Project, Oracle’s Primavera, Atlassian’s Jira, SAP, and over twenty other management tools. Unfortunately, none come close to solving what ATC is looking for in improving our productivity.

 

My contact, who has a Ph.D. in computer science and works at Pepperdine’s Graziadio Business School, told me about a company building a tool that could fulfill our needs. I called the company, Optimize Workflow, Inc. (OWI) about a month ago and talked with its founders. They claim their product is about 85% operational.

 

OWI told me they’re about eleven months away from having a viable product they can take to market. All OWI needs are a small amount of additional funding ($400,000) or a partner to start the eleven-month clock clicking. OWI’s founders explained that not only does the Optimize Workflow product measure productivity, but it also has a patent for its resource allocation algorithm. They use game theory and an organization’s experts to assess the importance of all activities the organization performs continuously. That includes all work on processes, products, projects, and even issues with those three’s tasks. The Optimize product daily allocates the most productive resources needed for their current allocation period to their most critical activities. The idea being, if an organization wants to maximize their ROI for their labor force, they need to assign their best people to their most critical tasks continuously,” said Veronica.

 

“Great work. Let’s set up a meeting with OWI as soon as possible,” said Warren.