Note: You may wish to read The Utilization Report to gain context.

“How does the utilization report arrive at its numbers?”

It seemed like a simple, straightforward and innocuous question at the time. Unfortunately, it opened an institution-sized metallic food storage container of blind, soil-ingesting invertebrates.

You see, the person who’d commissioned the development of the utilization report didn’t really understand what he was building. He had vague amorphous ideas about what he wanted – perhaps he’d seen a report at some other company that was used to determine how well the employees were being utilized and decided it was a good idea. Based on second-hand knowledge and investigation into the reports themselves, here’s how I picture the utilization report’s progression in my head:

Project Requester: “I want a report that tells me if there’s enough work for my employees.” –note: He’s saying “show number of hours worked divided by number of hours that could have been worked”
– time passes –
Programmer: “OK, here it is.”
Project Requester: “It’s wrong. It needs to take holidays into account.”
– time passes –
Programmer: “OK, here it is.”
Project Requester: “It’s wrong. It needs to take PTO into account.”
– time passes –
Programmer: “OK, here it is.”
Project Requester: “It’s wrong. It  should use the number of hours the employee has been scheduled to work instead of the hours actually worked.”
Programmer: “What?”
Project Requester: “It has to.”
– time passes –
Programmer: “OK, here it is.”
Project Requester: “It’s wrong. If an employee had a job that ran late the night before, the Scheduling department schedules an employee for a block of time the next day in order to keep him from having to work. The report has to take that into account when it happens.”
– time passes –
Programmer: “OK, here it is.”
Project Requester: “It’s wrong. It needs to show that an employee worked the whole weekend if he was scheduled for a Saturday.”
– time passes –
Programmer: “OK, here it is.”
Project Requester: “It’s wrong. It needs to assume every employee spent two hours to get to the job site and two hours to get home.”
– time passes –
Programmer: “OK, here it is.”
Project Requester: “It’s wrong.”
Programmer: “How is it wrong?”
Project Requester: “The numbers can’t possibly be that low. The report is wrong.” –note: It showed an average of 64% utilization (i.e. employees jacked off 36% of the time for which they were paid). It was later found that actual utilization was 52% if they were afforded every possible benefit of the doubt.

The utilization report was used to determine year-end monetary bonuses for managers. However, every time the utilization numbers were too low to allow the maximum bonus, the managers would say “The report’s always been inaccurate. The numbers are really much higher.” And the bonus would be awarded.