Advice Line | Bob Lewis | InfoWorld | Clarifying the difference between assessment and measurement | November 20, 2007 10:36 AM

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Clarifying the difference between assessment and measurement

November 20, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Clarifying the difference between assessment and measurement

Dear Bob ...

I'm having a little trouble seeing the (IMHO subtle) difference between assessing and measuring (see "Taking the measure of IT professionals," Keep the Joint Running, 11/5/2007). It seems to me that the way you have defined assessing, it is no different than measuring.

It is not as simple as assembly line work to be sure. But you have spelled out 6 criteria:

1. What did you do?
2. What did you miss?
3. How do you compare?
4. What you did you do on your own initiative?
5. Did you support the team?
6. Did you exercise good judgment?

One and two are pretty quantifiable, they measure assignments. Three is grading on a curve. Four is did you go above and beyond the call of duty, pass/fail. Five and six may not be quantifiable, but you can site instances where they did or did not happen, pass/fail again.

So it is not as straight forward as widgets/hour + defects/widget, but it is still a measurement.

- Measurer

Dear Measurer ...

"Measurement" has been defined and redefined enough times that there are those who use it to refer to any form of assessment. In my opinion, this has had two effects, neither of them good. The first is to make it harder to understand what someone means when they say "measurement." The other is to make the job of assessing employee performance seem more scientific than it really is.

"What did you do/not do" aren't the least bit quantitative, except for assembly line work. I suppose you could try - you could assign weighting factors to each accomplishment and total them all up. In the end, you'll still just be translating judgment to a number.

Pitching in certainly isn't pass/fail. It's a matter of extent. Highly variable and highly subjective.

The same is true of supporting colleagues. It isn't pass/fail. It's how much, and there's no way to objectively measure it.

Same comment on judgment. There are only shades of gray here and discussions about the manager's opinion, the employee's opinion, how the employee arrived at decisions, and the manager's ability to coach and guide.

There are those who consider every form of assessment a measurement. I've even heard non-quantitative adjectives called measures - "orange," for example.

All it does is confuse the conversation.

In my measurably humble opinion, at least.

- Bob

Posted by Bob Lewis on November 20, 2007 10:36 AM

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