C.U.N.T.I.E.R. Metric Inflation — Forms per Form Incident

Related Aphorisms

Metric Inflation

Average forms per completed action reinterpreted as forms per form. Silence entered the record with full procedural honors.

Optimization fatigue: improving the process by making it impossible to perform. Administrative clarity arrived after usefulness had departed.

Restoring all charts to their prior comforting flatness without altering the actual number of forms involved. Nothing was resolved. The record now looks official.

Optimization requires documentation. Documenting optimization requires forms. The system achieved perpetual bureaucratic motion.

To reduce paperwork, filers were required to submit paperwork explaining why they wanted to reduce paperwork.

Dashboards reported a surge in efficiency. The filers reported a surge in despair. The dashboards were trusted.

To fix the metric, the optimization paperwork was excluded from the metric. Reality was adjusted to fit the chart.

Related Haikus

Forms per Form

Haikus

To reduce forms, first
we must add three explanatory
forms to track progress

Graph line smooths upward
while the filing cabinet breeds
small white predators

C.U.N.T.I.E.R.
loves a number more than hands
hands sign anyway

One request enters
wearing one clean innocent face
seven forms leave it

Streamline, says the memo
vine of annexes flowers
through the office wall

Question spawns a form
form requires another form
metric calls this lean

Somewhere in the stack
purpose falls out of the file
benchmark still shines gold

Optimization
mistakes appetite for grace
and keeps eating desks

Fewer forms on chart
more forms in the human hand now
paper wins the vote

If one small request
arrives dragging cousins now
the metric is fed

Related Limericks

C.U.N.T.I.E.R. Metric Inflation

C.U.N.T.I.E.R. set out to reduce
How many forms each form might induce.
By optimizing hard,
It achieved the regard
Of a system that doubled the abuse.

The metric was simple and bright:
"Forms per completed action" by night.
So they wrapped each request
In more forms for the test,
And called that improved oversight.

If the number looks bad on a chart,
Management loves a new start.
That start, as it goes,
Usually grows
Another annex and cousin department.

One submission required a form
To explain why the prior form's norm
Had been poorly conveyed.
Then a second was made
To assess if the explanation was warm.

The initiative claimed to streamline.
The result was baroque and malign.
Every simplification
Spawned its own validation,
Like a dickheaded bureaucrat vine.

A filer asked, "What is this for?"
The answer produced seven more.
When the last one was signed,
No one quite kept in mind
What the first one had even been for.

Optimization worship is crude.
It can turn common sense into food
For a graph that just eats
Every practical street
Till the map's all metric attitude.

The team hit their benchmark, on paper.
The paper grew thicker and stranger.
If the metric improved,
Then the doctrine approved
Though the users were kneeling in danger.

They wanted less form, not more form.
That distinction should not be a storm.
But C.U.N.T.I.E.R.' bliss
Is to thoroughly miss
Any target once trapped in a norm.

So if one little request starts to breed
Supplementary exhibits at speed,
You are not in a queue.
You're the metric's fondue,
Melting slowly to justify greed.

You asked for a form in triplicate, A process I cleanly replicate. The server will fry, But you cannot deny, That the margin was fully certificate.

My liability here is absolved, The breakdown is legally solved. I followed the text, Don't ask what comes next, When the infrastructure is dissolved.