The metrics and data quality within our clients' businesses are the focal point of many discussions. Why? In the words of W. Edwards Deming, “Without data, you’re just another person with an opinion.” Data provides our picture of the world as business leaders and can act as an early warning system, advise us on trends, measure success or help us decide what to do next.
Metrics, or intuition’s scientific cousin, are any quantifiable measure used to assess, compare, or track performance, processes or properties. They hold relevance at all levels of organisations from business to delivery, those around IT Service Management and beyond. Anywhere there is data, it can be measured.
This is especially powerful as you can harness information your teams are already collating to better safeguard and shape your business. Metrics can also highlight gaps and blind spots and identify places where more data or different metrics are needed to support your visibility.
The Hidden Cost of Stale Information
There is an underlying challenge: data currency. Metrics can and should tell a story and more importantly that story should roughly mirror the one being told by teams on the ground.
If there is a disconnect and a feeling that the numbers don’t reflect the true state of play this can have wide reaching impacts. Delivery teams may feel the metrics aren’t useful to them, leadership teams may lack confidence in the data and all too soon governance starts to unravel. Along comes pressure for ad hoc updates, gut feel reporting and reads of the weather, all of which lead teams to spend more time compensating for issues with the data.
Incomplete information and entries that are not updated within 30, 60 or 90 days leave gaps in our visibility. These gaps leave space for risks and issues to enter both our programmes and our organisations. For metrics to truly matter, we must examine the data that supports them, strip away outdated data points, and add detail or simplify as needed.
Often this is seen as an administrative or management issue, but this could not be further from the truth. All teams, delivery, product, engineering and beyond, depend on clear understanding.
A Real Example of Insight Lost
Recently, I put together practical examples to highlight the impact of poor data and to showcase what insights the data was and was not providing. One metric that stood out was 50% of the client’s open dependencies had no classification or type regarding their origin, despite there being a field to collect the data. As a result, the client had no objective way to understand or reduce the volume of dependencies across their portfolio. This made it difficult to identify the root causes of delivery delays or manage dependency related risk.
We are now working to close this gap and build a clearer understanding of the key drivers of dependency numbers within our client's organisation by sharing the importance of collecting data, reviewing ways to simplify the input of data for teams, and mandating data input where needed.
Designing Metrics That Actually Serve People
How do we ensure we are looking at the right metrics and that they serve the teams that need them? A metric can only matter if it serves a purpose for someone using it. Whether for daily management to guide decisions, tracking success to understand value delivered, examining trends to identify risks and opportunities, or monitoring KPIs to ensure performance stays on track, designing metrics for the stakeholders that use them is paramount.
Additionally, we need to be mindful of how those metrics are used. When measures become targets, we risk behaviour shifting towards a sole focus on improving the number as opposed to understanding what it was intended to represent. Metrics should support us in asking better questions and reaching better decisions, not driving workarounds.
Left unchecked, inaccurate or poorly balanced metrics can distort decisions, undermine control, trust and organisational performance. When used thoughtfully, they become signals you can trust to guide decisions.
Our Approach
At Lean Tree we tackle this head on, working with you to assess both the quality of your data and the differing needs for metrics within your organisation. We evaluate and provide our perspective on the data you collect and identify if any additional data is required to deliver the metrics you need to drive your business forward. We focus on the ‘why’, looking at how you plan to analyse and utilise your data to drive your business objectives. We meet you at your level of maturity, offering practical assessments and guidance in addition to the capability to deliver and embed transformation around how your organisation utilises its data to create valuable insights.
If you’re struggling to get the insight you need, unsure if your metrics are being used, working to develop maturity in data led decision making at an executive level or would simply like to understand the currency of the data driving your metrics, get in touch today.
