The philosophy of metrics
Sunday, June 13, 2010 at 6:46PM I've been training for a marathon, and as my "long" weekend runs have been getting longer, I've gotten caught up on a number of podcasts I had in my backlog. I was recently listening to some podcasts in the ITSM Manager series (http://itsmadviser.com).
I found myself nodding my head a lot as I listened to episode #16 "The Philosophy of Metrics". I don't know what it does for my running form to nod my head as I run, but it sure makes the miles fly by.
Some of the key points in that podcast resonated well with material in the Opposite of Luck, such as:
- Focusing on the wrong metrics. The hosts give the example of % availability. Such a widely used metric in IT, but so deceptive at representing impact to the business, and so easy to manipulate. That's why we dedicate an important section of the book to the Business Impact Index (BII).
- People performance reviews. It's important to make IT Service Quality goals personal. The podcast authors deplore seldom seeing individual performance objectives be tied to critical success factors for the organization's operation, which in turn should tie to strategic objectives of IT and the business. Once you implement a solid metric like the BII, tying a portion of individual bonuses to it will promote the right organizational behavior. The beauty of it is you don't need to do this only for "operations" or "production" or "ITIL" personnel. You can make this the business of everybody in the IT organization.
- Transparency: The podcast authors briefly discuss making such metrics transparent. Of course that means transparency to the people being measured on them. I'd also add that these metrics should be transparent to everyone else in IT and to the business. An added benefit is that it will earn a lot of credibility with the business when IT shows how well it's doing, whether the news is good or bad.
Reader Comments (1)
This is one of the most excellent resourceful websites of its kind.The article written by you very good! I like it very much. I have never read such a lovely article !!LV Taiga Leather