Managers will often demand proof that questing for quality will have some measurable “return on investment.” That’s an easy one. Just agree to provide ROI numbers using the same system they currently use. No such system exists.

When a manager demands that you justify your efforts, simply ask her the same in reverse. How does she justify her current methods?

Beware metrics. We are enamored with them from the days of waterfall, when we couldn’t tell what was going on until the end of the project. So, we devised metrics to attempt to read the tea leaves of what might be going on so we could get early warnings. Earned value is a great example of this. Also, we developed metrics to prove that things were improving to our customers even though over 1/2 of our projects failed. See, we are getting better, so leave us alone and please don’t fire us.