I found "initiatives" was added. What does this new initiatives measure bring. Why do we care about otherwise unqualified initiatives, how do i know that doesn't just mean using the other 4 proven measures as cover for pushing pet projects without merit?
I'm super cynical tonight it seems. This is just rubbing me up the wrong way i guess and i can't really put my finger on why.
Especially now with AI, what do metrics like "prs/engineer" even mean when you have background agents open/reviewing/releasing PRs without human intervention? what is the right unit for measuring health of the org?
FWIW I write a lot more about "why not existing frameworks" in depth in the full paper.
Initiatives are defined specifically as non-productive, technical leverage-producing initiatives that affect the org's health as a whole and are often left behind. For example, we recently ran an initiative around feature flag cleanups and full rollouts that we tracked religiously during our weekly OpEx review – without which we probably would not have had the same success with that cleanup initiative.
I understand your cynicism with "yet another framework" but (and I know I'm biased) this framework is intimately tied to ops reviews as a mechanism for both measurement and organizational change.