[hackoder]

A lot of ideas sound great to management, and they work too! I mean, other than killing employee morale and resulting in long term loss ;-)

At one of my past jobs, we worked like consultants (we quoted hours that a task would take to get done, tested etc). We filled daily timesheets to ensure that our hours did not exceed our estimates. In fact, the time on those timesheets had to total 40 hours every week. So we worked the full 40 hours. And we billed those 40 hours to the client. In those few months, I was as productive as I've ever been.

Unfortunately, we weren't paid like consultants.. we got a regular salary. Management was doing nothing wrong. They failed to realize that the 'consultant lifestyle' of billing and working in hours only works if there is an equally motivating paycheck to go with it. I've known multiple people to leave because of how hard it was.

You shouldn't need a person to blame field. Good responsible employees will know what they did wrong and work to fix it. And if they don't, having the field in there will only increase finger pointing and people trying to protect their own jobs. And your bottom line will still not improve. So why do it?