生产力中的主观性

Precision. Certainty. Specificity. Everyone wants to know exactly what and exactly when, and they want a statistic attached to corroborate it.

But numbers are rarely answers — just as projects are rarely math problems.

Where are we in this process exactly?

How far along in this project are we exactly?

Where does everything stand absolutely?

There are no equal signs after those statements.

There are all sorts of things in life that you want but can’t have. Exactly is one of them.

Creative work thrives on subjective interpretation. You can establish an end date that’s fixed, but where you are is really up to you.

Yes, in some specific businesses with ultra-specific standardized widget-making processes, it’s possible to expect and require perfectly precise forecasts. But that’s almost certainly not yours.

The quest for knowing exactly has preoccupied entire industries with impossible answers, and pushed entire categories of tools towards the wrong trends.

You can find out where things stand. But the answer is a human one, not a digital one. It’s fuzzy, it’s a bit abstract, and it’s more a feeling than a figure. It’s taking stock of all the things that can’t be measured, and speaking or writing the actual answer, not pointing to an abstract number. “63” means nothing. “We think next Tuesday” means something.

As long as humans are making things, it’s best to ride along with human nature. To follow that seam, rather than to cross it.

This is what we’ve been doing as of late in Basecamp. We’ve been adding imprecise, humanizing features to project management. If you want false precision, you have plenty of other choices. If you want a system that represents what’s really going on, here we are.

For example, take Basecamp’s Hill Charts and Move The Needle features. They are visual representations of where individual scopes of work, or entire projects stand, based on the flexibility and subjectivity of someone’s mind and hand, not a computer’s representation of rigidity.

Both tools use graphical markers — either a dot or a needle — that people physically move around and place on a subjective scale based on an understanding of where something stands. It’s not precise, it’s approximate. “About here.” “Feels like we’re this far along”. That imprecise wiggle room is also known as the truth.

You can see how both features work here...

Hill Charts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZKJD-l3W6EMove The Needle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0urtIQrFyQ

Subjectivity is a good thing — a human thing. It’s with the grain. Subjectivity and productivity are partners, not adversaries.

Over time we’ll be adding more imprecision like this to Basecamp. The more we can reflect reality, not a false premise, the better off teams will be. We know that, we believe that, and we’ll continue to promote that.