Who is Using the System? Tracking in the Enterprise

For years, web sites have been measured - and valued - by user traffic. Who is looking at this site? When are they coming, and how long are they staying? Driven by the advertising business model that values "impressions", web analytics have evolved in a number of ways; the interest has shifted from Passive to Active. Advertisers want to know who is clicking, selecting, comparing, buying, and abandoning. Games track Daily Average Users, Social Networks quantify contributions and visualize connections,…

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Where to Start? (2 of 2) Metrics & Measurements

Bullet point #1 in your executive-friendly PowerPoint about "Achieving Operational Excellence in IT" covers Process and Procedure; so how do we measure our effectiveness? I'm a big proponent of Metrics and Measurements as well - but often times the biggest challenge is where to start? Measure the Unmeasured In most organizations (especially manufacturers!), the business has plenty of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that tell them how much productivity they are seeing, how much money they are saving, and how they…

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Defining an Effective IT Metrics Framework

Had a really good conversation about metrics the other day. We've been discussing ways to express how our systems are performing, delivering value, and staying available - and I'd like to use the same general structure for all systems, regardless of function (transactions, integrations, analytics) or platform (Wintel, AS/400, Open Systems). For each type of metric, we need to understand two dimensions: Performance against some Target. This can either be a baseline (a minimum or average expected score), or a…

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How Fun – Timesheets

In the early part of the year, we tracked our time as a group using timesheets. We don't use these to justify our payroll or anything, just an exercise to validate that we were properly apportioning our time across multiple demands. Also, we wanted to help explain why it takes more than one week of calendar time to complete one week of effort time. As I was scanning old emails, I came across the summary / findings note that I…

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