You might have a heard a standard mathematical question in our school

if 1 woodcutter take 1 day to cut 1 tree how many trees can be cut by 10 woodcutter in 1 days

The standard answer is 10 tress.

Is calculating productivity is so simple ?????

Calculating Productivity in Man-hours using above calculation On the paper it looks beautiful and allows for some interesting calculations.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t work like that in the real world. throwing more resources at one task in hope to compete it faster might just lead to a huge waste.

And here are the reasons why.

When we need to calculate productivity There are other factors that need to be considered , In case of Woodcutter mathematical equation we need to consider below Factor before calculating the productivity

Woodcutter – Project Team

• Skill Set
  • Productivity of the resource should consider resource current skill set that resource have for the task that are assigned to them.
  • If the resource need to be trained on a particular skill set which task demands sufficient buffer need to be added before considering him to be productive.
• Experience
  • Experience resource who is working in particular function and module will be more productive in comparison to resource who is still learning the module.
• Motivation (Intrinsic/Extrinsic)
  • Recognize contributions: Celebrate successes and recognize contributions with verbal praise, written feedback, or public recognition
  • Celebrate Both Small & Big Wins
  • Allow your team time and space to work on themselves and acknowledge when they hit a milestone.
  • Create environment that supports and show them praise and appreciation when they deserve it.
• Burnout & Human Fatigue
  • Promote a team culture of psychological safety
  • Build buffer time into schedules so that employees have time not just to rest and recharge but also for professional development and administrative tasks.
  • Project deadlines are important, but if your team operates on a false sense of urgency all the time, it’s time to recalibrate and reset the work culture. 
  • Maintain a regular cadence of acknowledging progress, addressing obstacles, and highlighting how the team successfully overcame challenges.

Axe – Tools/Process

• Tools/Process or Project Frameworks need to compliment and enhance productivity of the Project Team members.
• Team should be given sufficient inputs how the Tool/Process or project framework adds to the value to work that they are doing.
• Revisit the Tools/Process and framework periodically with the project Team.
• Be open to change or customize Tools or process if situation demands.

Sharpening of the Axe – Flexible to Customize the process based and open for inputs and Feedback during the Project Cycle

• Have regular Sprint retrospective , project retrospective and be very open to take the feedback from the Project Team.
• Retrospective is not the blame game exercise it is more of lesson learnt exercise to identify what need to be worked on.
• Have open mine to adapt and learn , Be flexible to change based on the situation and think productivity as what value we bring to the table on particular day.