PM's monthly report includes the stats of the work hours, bug fix per developer

Question

We are a cross functional product development teams that does monthly release.

There are 3 teams work together: my team works on web-development, team B works on embedded system and team C bridges us together (to put in a simple way). One thing bothers me from the project management point of view is that the project manager will send out the stats about everyone's "productivity" at the end of each release, e.g. the work hours (according to his spreadsheet), the bug fix rates (how many bugs you fixed), how many bugs you introduced when implementing a new feature, etc.

For me, as the manager of team A I don't see the usefulness of that. I am not sure about my team member's thought when he/she sees other member creates/fixes more bug than me. I can ask but I doubt if they will tell me the truth. I feel the stats about work hour are the worst. The report also makes me feel his lines of responsibility and mine cross.

But on the other hand I think the project manager is just doing his job. Maybe he is trained to do it that way. We do have some monthly releases that had poor quality than others so maybe a reminder to everyone is not that bad (I am trying to see the silver lining of his report).

So my question is as the team manager how do I deal with that monthly report, e.g how do I control its "damage" and maybe even make use of it ?

BTW, I asked a related question at https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/164397/the-project-manager-sends-out-the-stats-about-the-work-hours-bug-fix-rates-ever because I didn't know https://pm.stackexchange.com/ exists at that time. My question here is different than that one.

Answer 1

Before you seek to change, first seek to understand. As you state (emphasis mine):

But on the other hand I think the project manager is just doing his job. Maybe he is trained to do it that way.

You're just guessing at this point. Why not meet with him and simply ask him outright why he sends out the report - what result he expects to receive from it.

• Maybe he's trying to shame people into working more hours.
• Maybe he's trying to increase transparency.
• Maybe he's trying to reduce bugs by measuring them (you get what you measure).
• Maybe his boss told him to do it and he has no choice.
• Maybe it's just 'what he's always done'.
• Maybe it's several different reasons.

Until you understand why a process is the way it is, you're wasting your time trying to figure out how to deal with it.