Benchmark and performance

What is the saying? If you want something done right, do it yourself?

Well, we can't all fix our own cars, perform surgery on our own hearts, and such. Yet, that we can push the farming-out envelope too far will be part of the discussion.

Farming out work can also be having someone do what you don't want to do, and it's not an un-smart move. If something has been done before and what is being sought is to have better ways (by cost or what have you), then certain types of supplier-chain relationships can make sense.

However, such farming out, when there are new horizons to conquer, can be thought of as pushing difficulty to someone else. In short, avoiding responsibility (or, call it risk sharing). That is, letting someone else do the creative work and just kicking back and evaluating the results relies on problematic benchmark management.

How about another saying? I don't know what I want but can tell you when I see it.

Do we see requirement and specification work falling into the trap of show me and I'll let you know? If something has not been done before, can doing a 'game change' by modifying terminology help obtain the necessary performance?

So many questions to ask and try to answer. We need to look at issues of measuring progress to sort out these benchmark and performance issues.

Remarks:

09/02/2009 -- Lets face it, folks, undecidability needs to be discussed and adopted in any complex situational setting, especially if computers are involved. Only hubris pushes us to make loud exclamations about what we're going to do in the future.

01/23/2009 -- Expect more effort in firming up the earned-value (and related) discussions.

11/01/2008 -- In the fall of 2008, IAM went on strike. Around the time that SPEEA would begin their talks with Boeing, the company announced that it had learned a few things about outsourcing. Imagine that! Of course, a post here had already made a parallel between outsourcing and leveraging, that bane of the financing world.

Modified: 09/02/2009