[brookst]

The value-add model is interesting. How would you characterize:

1. An hour-long meeting where architecture is decided

2. Doing investigation/documentation of RCA for an incident

3. Spec reviews with stakeholders who will have to use the product

[version_five]

Right, examples like yours are where it gets interesting. What I think can work is minimizing who needs to be involved in these kind of activities (not to say as few as possible, but only those its relevant too), and looking at how important they are to the desired outcomes, basically understanding how much time they take up vs what the return on the time is. All easier said than done of course.

[brookst]

I do like the idea. Maybe there’s a distinction between direct productivity and indirect, overhead-like contribution? Sort of the difference between gross margin and net income?

But it’s tough. As a product manager, I think that the right spec can greatly increase engineering efficiency. If that’s true, and bear with me, spending an extra 20 hours on a spec might save 1000 hours of dev time. Isn’t that the same as making those devs more productive? So do we count that work as 20 hours, or 1000 hours?

I like it in principle but I’m not sure it scales across disciplines.