I still love the original trello neglect metric of just sum of ages in days. I’m game to try this (average age instead of total) but here are my worries:
- Adding new cards will bring the average age down.
- Minding the mean makes it harder to dispatch a beemergency by focusing on one or two of the oldest cards.
Imagine a flat yellow brick road that you were right on the edge of yesterday (my motto: consider the akratic steady state). Then today the average age will increase by 1 day (+1 on all cards) and you’ll be 1 above the road…
… Wait, now I’m wondering if #2 is just wrong, and maybe #1 is fine if adding lame-o cards to bring down the average is not a loophole you’d abuse. Maybe adding more cards is even something you’d like to add incentive for.
Ok, so maybe simply minding the average age is best after all! Eager to hear what others think!
(Being a math nerd I’m now also wondering about things like geometric instead of arithmetic mean, which might incentivize greater focus on older cards. And of course then you can generalize that with a parameter… http://mathworld.wolfram.com/PowerMean.html)