- Theme: Measurement Standards
- Presenter: Victor Jüttner
Measurability and measurement also play a major role in Capability-Maturity approaches such as CMMI in software engineering, but only at a late stage of maturity (level 4 in CMMI), since only something that is available in a sufficiently structured form can be measured.
Physics, as one of the oldest "measuring" sciences, teaches that not only the structuredness of what is being measured is important, but also about the interpretation of the measurement results. The close connection between theory, measurement procedures, measurement results and interpretations is well known there.
It is also only worthwhile to measure something that in the further (direct or even only indirect) course has an impact on the process design.
The strategies mentioned in Darrell Mann's text are closely related to the Class 4 standards of TRIZ Substance-Field (SF) modelling.
Literature:
- (Mann-2007, pp. 353 ff)
Measurements of the performance of labour such as standardisations and piecework wage only started to play a role with the transition to massively dissected labour processes at the beginning of the 20th century and the consideration of workers as exchangeable parts of the industrial machine. Before that, the worker encapsulated specific, non-formalised procedural skills and could not simply be replaced by the metaphorical "trained gorilla".
As the division of labour continues to increase and the importance of procedural skills tied to specific individuals grows, measuring processes within organisations becomes much more complicated again. Nevertheless, measurement plays an important role in many Business Process Management approaches, such as e.g. the S.M.A.R.T. approach, because measurement is associated with a certain "objectification" of assessments.
However, measurement is rich of prerequisites and regularly leads to a deterioration of the "ideality" if considered in isolation, since it consumes resources in a non-productive way. Measurement must therefore always be linked to a controlling effect that more than compensates for the costs of measurement. Measurement is thus always embedded in more comprehensive comparisons of target and actual figures and unfolds its effect during operation of the organisation and thus only in the "living" organisation itself.
A distinction must therefore be made between the planning of measurements and the evaluation of the measurement results, the latter as part of the operation of the organisation. Measurements are thus an inherent part of more comprehensive quality assurance measures and must be embedded in such a framework of a "learning living organisation".
However, quality assurance in organisations is itself prerequisite-rich and only possible in a clearly structured operational context in which process modules and templates are abstracted to a suitable extent so that they can be compared with each other. Capability Maturity Models such as CMMI address therefore first the development of structured process landscapes themselves (maturity levels 1-3). Measurements and measurement processes can only be set up in such structured Business Process environments with a meaningful control effect.
Such questions did not play a role neither in Darrell Mann's book nor in the presentation and discussion in the seminar.
Why measure? Refer to APQR PCF section (13.6.) if applicable.
What are the prerequisites for measuring?
How are measurement and "objectification" related - see last lecture?
How are measurement and comparison related?
Should and is - a topic?
Measuring and development? Measuring development?
How to define benefits, costs, harm?
It is often claimed in TRIZ that ideality is a qualitative concept. Why and how it can be quantified?
Perceived - what does that mean? Only reducing uncertainty and complexity? Subjectivity?
Why no arrow Contol -> Process? Isn't the "why" located there?
TRIZ Standards Class 4 - Measurement in Substance-Field Models. That is where the approaches (a)-(h) come from. It would make sense to take a closer look. See (Koltze/Souchkov, chapter 8).
(B) Measure and test. What is the connection? Software testing, for example.
Virtual customer - simulation of processes?
(G) Psychology: Is it measuring?
(I) Anticipatory Failure Analysis
Change in the photo industry: Is measurement a panacea?
Remember function - does it have anything to do with measurement or with aggregation of data (pictures)? What is needed for this? Metadata? Does metadata have anything to do with measurement? Is measurement always numerical?
Does measurement always deteriorate ideality? It consumes resources without contributing to the value proposition in the strict sense. Even if "project own resources" are used.
Headings From APQR PCF 13.6 Measure and benchmark
- Create and manage organizational performance strategy
- Create enterprise measurement systems model
- Measure process efficiency
- Measure cost effectiveness
- Measure staff productivity
- Measure cycle time
- Benchmark performance
- Conduct performance assessments
- Develop benchmarking capabilities
- Conduct internal process and external competitive benchmarking
- Conduct gap analysis
- Establish need for change
- Evaluate process performance
- Establish appropriate performance indicators (metrics)
- Establish monitoring frequency
- Collect data
- Calculate performance measures
- Identify performance trends
- Analyze performance against benchmark data
- Prepare reports
- Develop performance improvement plan