Planning and Designing Effective Metrics

CHAPTER1

Metrics: The Basics

An Introduction

Of all the possible organizational-improvement tools, metrics stands out for me as the most requested, misunderstood, feared—and useful. Defining metrics from a high level requires that I give you the What, Why, When, Where, Who, and How.

What

For me, metrics are a means of telling a complete story for the purpose of improving something. Usually, the idea is to improve an organization. Sometimes, though, you will want to focus on improving a process. In the end, anything you improve should align back to improvements that help the organization.

Metrics are a tool for improvement. By their nature, metrics use different levels of information to tell a story. Although I always strive to make this story ...