There are three important aspects of developing good metrics for individual initiatives: identifying what you can influence, asking the right questions and understanding the deliverables.
Identifying what you can influence: Work only on the things you are intended to change
The purpose of metrics is to help a decision-maker make better decisions. There are two situations that nullify the value of even the best metrics:
- There are no real plans to change anything in what you are measuring.
- It is not possible to change anything in what you are measuring.
It’s important to focus your metrics only on what you can and are likely to change if the data shows the need for it. If you cannot change anything by any reason, then there is very little point in measuring it.
Ask right questions
We do measurements to answer particular questions of our interest. Asking the right questions correctly is the foundation of any metric. The right questions are:
- Actionable. The right questions assume taking actions once the correct answer is known.
- Measurable. The right questions should be quantitatively measured, as well as the actions taken based on the future answer.
- Based on domain knowledge.
Design metrics for each initiative separately
We want to achieve long-term goals. The path to achieving long-term goals consists of achieving a number of short-term goals. The issues arise when long-term goal metrics are used to measure short-term goal initiatives. The long-term goal metrics are based on many measurements and as a result are influenced by many factors. Each short-term initiative should have its own metrics that measure the deliverables for that particular initiative.
This is a fragment of a draft of the book “Lessons Learned While Working On Stack Overflow”. Read the full book on kindle or the paperback version.