Data Weaponization in the age of analytics, metrics and 'improvement'

[Chris Boys]

An advisor commented to me about why we’re still so afraid culturally of metrics.  “Data weaponization” I was told. 

There’s clearly a lot of wariness in society about data. Its security, ownership and intended application. The shadows of discrimination and bias, manipulation of context to contextualise results, surveillance for the purpose of control and misrepresentation are real.

What about a company’s context?  What’s the intent behind being ‘data-driven’?

Usually it’s the growth that comes from the creation of less waste and more value from superior awareness, alignment and decision making. All at an ever increasing need for speed. Hence data, generated from metrics used to track and measure progress and course correct when needed.

The shadow side of data still exists. Individual and team fears are real.  Only by naming it can a team really take action to build cultures that are safe, trusting and empowered.

When implementing a data-guided (i.e. metrics + surveys) culture to learn and grow and progress to plan, nothing can be assumed. Too much is at stake.  To help address fears, mitigate against data weaponization and get traction with applying insights, we always encourage our partners to be intentional and transparent in defining guiding principles that will work for them. They’re the foundations that ensure trust, a level-playing field and being set-up for success.

Privacy rights, demanding transparency, promoting guiding principles of how team performance data will and will not be used are needed to underpin organisational cultures where performance data from metrics and experience surveys is respected, protected and applied responsibly for the empowerment of your team’s performance and experience.

I’ve shared some thought starters here that relate to our context of using metrics for building team performance.  What else could teams think about when defining guiding principles for building their high performing performance culture?

[Michael Kerr]

Interesting article and thoughts.  Thank you for sharing; it stirs thoughts. 

Overall, don't we need to be weary of a social scoring system? 

Metrics within JIRA are not meant to be used to compare between teams.  Each team technically, has different stories and different work, therefore different story point usage.  Tracking for team performance improvements still can lead to issues of "gaming" the system to show improvements, but still have customer dissatisfiers.  From experience, when management says, "we will not use data to do this"; then that's what they are doing, unfortunately. 

Thank you