Why do we only talk about measuring productivity?

Manufacturing organisations typically measure 5 (or 6) major things:

• Quality
• Cost
• Delivery OR Productivity
• Safety
• Morale
• Environment (more recently)

Safety and Environment is generally not relevant for the software development organisation.  We sometimes talk about measuring Quality and Cost but the discussions are invariably focused on Productivity.  And, it is rare indeed to be in a discussion about measuring Morale.

So perhaps the problem is not whether or not we can figure out how to usefully measure productivity in software development but rather that we tend to believe that productivity is the only thing worth looking at.