PRODUCTIVITY
Productivity refers to the ratio between the output from production
processes to its input. Productivity may be conceived of as a measure of the
technical or engineering efficiency of production. As such quantitative
measures of input, and sometimes output, are emphasized.
Typical Productivity Calculations
Measures of size and resources may be combined in many different ways.
The three common approaches to defining productivity based on the model of
Figure 2 are referred to as physical, functional, and economic productivity.
Regardless of the approach selected, adjustments may be needed for the factors
of diseconomy of scale, reuse, requirements churn, and quality at delivery.
a) Physical Productivity
This is a
ratio of the amount of product to the resources consumed (usually effort).
Product may be measured in lines of code, classes, screens, or any other unit
of product. Typically, effort is measured in terms of staff hours, days, or
months. The physical size also may be used to estimate software performance
factors (e.g., memory utilization as a function of lines of code).
b) Functional Productivity
This is a ratio of the amount of the functionality delivered to the
resources consumed (usually effort). Functionality may be measured in terms of
use cases, requirements, features, or function points (as appropriate to the
nature of the software and the development method). Typically, effort is
measured in terms of staff hours, days, or months. Traditional measures of
Function Points work best with information processing systems. The effort
involved in embedded and scientific software is likely to be underestimated
with these measures, although several variations of Function Points have been
developed that attempt to deal with this issue.
c) Economic Productivity
This is a ratio of the value of the product produced to the cost of the
resources used to produce it. Economic productivity helps to evaluate the
economic efficiency of an organization. Economic productivity usually is not
used to predict project cost because the outcome can be affected by many
factors outside the control of the project, such as sales volume, inflation,
interest rates, and substitutions in resources or materials, as well as all the
other factors that affect physical and functional measures of productivity.
However, understanding economic productivity is essential to making good
decisions about outsourcing and subcontracting. The basic calculation of
economic productivity is as follows:
Economic
Productivity = Value/Cost
PROBLEMS IN MEASUREMENT OF PRODUCTIVITY OF
KNOWLEDGE WORKERS
Productivity
implies measurement, which in turn, is an essential step in the control
process. Although there is a general agreement about the need for improving
productivity, there is little consensus about the fundamental causes of the
problem and what to do about them. The blame has been assigned to various
factors. Some people place it on the greater proportion of less skilled workers
with respect to the total labor force, but others disagree. There are those who
see cutback in research and the emphasis on immediate results as the main
culprit. Another reason given for the productivity dilemma is the growing
affluence of people, which makes them less ambitious. Still others cite the
breakdown in family structure, the workers’ attitudes, and government policies
and regulations. Another problem is that the measurement of skills work is
relatively easy, but it becomes more difficult for knowledge work. The difference
between the two kinds is the relative use of knowledge and skills.
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