Planning and Designing Effective Metrics

CHAPTER4

Using Metrics as Indicators

To keep things simple, thus far I’ve focused only on the following basic concepts:

• Metrics are made up of basic components: data, measures, information, and other metrics.
• Metrics should be built from a root question.
• It’s more important to share how you won’t use a metric than how you will.

This chapter introduces another basic concept about creating and using metrics—metrics are nothing more than indicators. That may seem to be a way of saying they aren’t powerful, but we know that’s not the case. Metrics can be extremely powerful. Rather, the concept of metrics as indicators warns us not to elevate metrics to the status of truth.

Metrics’ considerable power is proven by how much damage they can do. Metrics’ ...