Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu!linac!att!cbfsb!cbnewsc!bwf
From: bwf@cbnewsc.att.com (bernard.w.fecht)
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: Personal growth and software engineering!
Message-ID: <1991Apr24.162446.5347@cbnewsc.att.com>
Date: 24 Apr 91 16:24:46 GMT
References: <1991Mar25.164133.29674@unislc.uucp> <599@tivoli.UUCP> <1991Apr21.181153.17062@cbnewsm.att.com>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Lines: 19

In article <1991Apr21.181153.17062@cbnewsm.att.com> lfd@cbnewsm.att.com (Lee Derbenwick) writes:
>I advocate working on metrics, but I recognize that at the moment we
>are more capable of collecting large amounts of data than we are at
>understanding what those data really mean.  And I _don't_ advocate
>waiting until we have fully reliable metrics before making changes.  I
>advocate using an out-of-fashion concept called engineering judgment
>to work on continuous improvement _now_, making use of what we can
>measure, but not treating it as a religion (or as the science it isn't,
>yet), while we learn how to measure more meaningfully.
>

Hmmm (forgive the possibly obvious, but enthusiastic revelation here),
we should make an effort to decouple process improvement and process
measurement -- "black-box metrics" in a sense.

Too often, the "process people" invent their own metrics and know too
much about them.  Its very tempting then, in errant or not, to chase
the metrics instead of the process and things become "metrics improvement"
exercise.