Guessing is not a strategy: How to build decision velocity with AI and real-time data
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Developing Alignment Metrics from the Top Down
Michael R. Wood is a Business Process Improvement & IT Strategist Independent Consultant. He is creator of the business process-improvement methodology called HELIX and founder of The Natural Intelligence Group, a strategy, process improvement and technology consulting company. He is also a CPA, has served as an Adjunct Professor in Pepperdine's Management MBA program, an Associate Professor at California Lutheran University, and on the boards of numerous professional organizations. Mr. Wood is a sought after presenter of HELIX workshops and seminars in both the U.S. and Europe.
Seems every time there is a conversation about metrics, two major groups emerge within the IT community: those that can’t figure out what to measure, and those that measure too much. One would think that developing quantifiable criteria by which success can be determined would not be such a difficult area with the IT arena; but based on the countless articles, workshops and seminars on the topic, metrics must be one tough nut to crack.
A search on the word metrics at www.gantthead.com returned 450 articles, blogs and discussions; more than just some light reading. So why then does it seem so straightforward to this old greybeard? As always, I have a theory about the difficult part and it goes like this: IT folks, in general, don’t want to be measured or held accountable for the value they deliver. They would prefer just to be trusted to do their best, and at the end of the day go home never to hear their beeper go off or answer a support call on their cell phone. In short, they are just like the rest of us.
Unfortunately, the world of business and good corporate governance doesn’t work that way. And besides, metrics done right can be a very good thing. In 2001, in my article “The Only Good Metric Is a Stakeholder-Value Driven Metric” published on gantthead.com, I stated:
“Building stakeholder-value driven metrics …
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