Putting the Indicator back in KPI

[bradley_owen]

I like to ride my bicycle. In fact, I like to ride it well. I use an app on my iPhone called Strava to track how well I ride it. Using the magic of GPS, I can compare my times on certain stretches of road with all other Strava users. I am proud to say I am now the 385th fastest of 1,016 riders on Kearny Villa Road.

In sports, we keep score. We love to keep stats. I had a friend in college who could quote any SF Giant's player stats from almost any year. RBIs, HRs, DUIs.

But not all stats are equal. Not all baseball players are created equal. My son had a batting average that exceeded every MLB player in 2006. Every at bat he got a hit. I don't mean to brag, but that translates to a perfect 1.000 average.

Did I mention he was playing t-ball?

In business, we keep KPIs. We love to keep stats. How many open incidents are we tracking? How fast can we release software? How satisfied are our customers?

I was on a call today with several large, multi-national corporate IT leaders discussing software release schedules- as long as 5 months and as short as 2 weeks. Philosophies are different when it comes to how you release software - many small releases like Google or few releases with very long windows like... Windows. That makes it hard to compare Apples to Chromebooks.

KPIs are Key to understanding how we are Performing, but are only Indicators and must be considered carefully and in context. I can't beat myself up because there are 384 riders faster than me, or take great pride that I am faster than 631. But for riders over 40 in my weight class who are men, I would have some better sense of how I am performing relative to my peers (if I ever buy the pro version of Strava).  Not sure they are all working full time or have 4 kids.  I probably don't log as many hours in the saddle as maybe 300 of those faster riders. But the last time I rode Kearny Villa Road was the fastest I have ever ridden it. But then again, it was a windy day, blowing my way.

KPIs can help us set new goals based on what we have done to date. But they only Indicate performance. They tell the truth, but not the whole truth.  For this reason, many put confidence intervals on metrics (think Process Control Charts).  That is a good practice.  But others get bent out of shape if there are 101 open incidents on any given day.

I admit that measuring past performance can have a very large impact on future performance - I would really like to crack the top 100 on Kearny Villa Road.  That would be great performance for me.  While I realize I am unlikely to be the fastest, I can still Strava for a PR.