I didn’t promise this paper contains a usuable definition. As I said, it would be very interesting to know what he actually means by saying that hyperproductive teams have 400% better productivity. 400% – but of what?

Hi Andy,

Thanks for the link. Some interesting snippets in the referenced paper. Upon reading, I felt cheated because I was hoping for some “good science” and found what looks to me much more like a piece of marketing copy. I was unable to winnow out a useful definition of “productivity” from the hype-chaff.

– Bob

http://scrum.jeffsutherland.com/2010/10/scrum-metrics-for-hyperproductive-teams.html

I love your amplification of Productivity. Goldratt, Deming, and your definition help understanding what it means—and the reference to productivity being a systemic rather than individual attribute is important.
I’d like to know more about the discernment (especially as a non-native speaker) of productivity, effectiveness, and efficacy.
I love Ohno’s suggestion of coming to work to think. Do you know if (and how) Toyota measures this “thinking”?
Thank you for an inspiring post!

I like the other points you raise. Although, as Andy mentions, an organization’s goal may be a moving target, at any given time I think it’s advisable to have an idea of what you’re aiming at before charging off to increase “productivity.”

The tie-in with ToC is interesting as well, in that a single-minded focus on raising a team’s productivity can easily result in a local optimum that generates excessive inventory. To desire productivity (in that sense of the word) for its own sake is a machine’s value, not a human value (a rant I’ve expressed elsewhere http://wp.me/p1CUP0-2V).

– The idea of “productivity” is closely related to the desire to measure, and in our current culture measuring immediatelly implies some form of numerical, objective metric. This is great if your “goal” is churning out gummy bears – you can then measure a number of things, and those metrics will be meaningful for your context. However, with knowledge work it gets more complex. Of course, in a business, the final measure is money – but usually it doesn’t translate well down to parts of a complex product. In other words: while it is easy to assess the overall economic health of a company, it is hard to attach valid economic value expressed in monetary terms to contribution of each knowledge worker, especially over short periods of time. That makes money useless as a productivity measure on a team level when working on a larger/more complex product.

– your definition’s weak point is that a company’s goal may be changing – a moving target (see also http://bit.ly/ACVZSG ). So while in pricinple you are right I’m not sure how we could use “getting closer to the goal” as a measure of productivity.

– how about productivity for organizations dealing purely with knowledge – like consulting/training companies or universities. I’m curious what you would use as a “unit (measurable step)” there?