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There is a mantra in the silicon valley; “Measure, or it’s not meaningful.” But what does this mean in practice?
It assumes a reliable source: such as measuring profit or loss. The data source is a bank, and the measure is a simple calculation.
How to Measure the Metrics that Matter, By Chris Brahm, Mark Kovac, and Peter Guarraia, covers this topic well. It boils down to signals processed into metrics. This creates two important questions.
Where and how do we obtain the best signals?
Are the chosen signals designed to answer the question?
Real success comes from asking another question. What do we want to discover about our solution, product, service, or company?
Asking the question a different way, you create a different outcome. Today, business tends to measure from obvious and readily available data. In the worst case, they take what ever data they can find and convert it into pretty pictures for management to consume.
A better method is to model what you want to know and find ways to create signals. This gives you two new avenues.
In band, and out of band. In-band data can be something like S.M.A.R.T data on a hard drive. Out of band data can be something like sensors in the case to monitor vibration and other…
