Truth from the Trenches by Mark Settle

Author:Mark Settle
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor and Francis

Through sheer coincidence, the other CIO who was co-teaching this seminar was a sales target of my current employer at the time. I had personally participated in a recent sales visit to his organization. When I sat down next to him at the conclusion of my presentation, he leaned over and whispered, “Who is my Judy?”

Chapter 5

What Gets Measured Gets Managed

Everyone agrees that metrics play a critical role in managing the performance of an IT organization, but few management teams make effective use of them. Most IT shops are drowning in metrics. They employ a wide variety of tools and systems that generate a continuous stream of metrics. Their support vendors report performance relative to the service level metrics specified in their contracts. Still other metrics are imposed on IT by corporate finance or HR or the internal audit team. It’s not all that surprising that metrics are largely ignored by IT groups because there are simply so many of them!

Metrics serve two primary purposes. First, they establish objective reality. In a large, dispersed IT organization it can be quite difficult to accurately gauge overall performance. Key indicators may be measured in different ways in different operating locations or may not be measured at all in others. Anecdotal information may be readily available, but it can be extremely difficult to verify, calibrate, or interpret. Subjective interpretations of inconsistent data and random anecdotes can easily lead to erroneous conclusions regarding organizational performance.

The second primary purpose of metrics is to modify the behavior of individuals and organizations. Metrics provide a means of maintaining organizational focus on strategic goals and objectives. They can also be used in a narrower context to fix tactical problems and correct operational deficiencies. Human behavior is a hard thing to predict. Although metrics can inspire and promote desired behaviors, they may inadvertently trigger unanticipated and undesirable behaviors as well.

IT organizations have an instinctive affinity for metrics. Most managers and staff members received academic training in math, science, or engineering early in their careers. They possess sophisticated data collection and analysis skills. They instinctively rely on quantitative information to develop plans and make decisions. To most members of the IT team, metrics represent a natural and logical way of monitoring and managing performance. Consequently, they surround themselves with metrics that serve a wide variety of purposes, ranging from daily operational hygiene to tactical process improvement to strategic organizational change.

Any management team seeking to develop a metrics scorecard needs to identify performance measures that satisfy four critical criteria. Meaningful metrics must be definable, measurable, comprehensible, and sustainable, as discussed below.

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