Sunday April 17, 2005

The Importance of Metrics

One of my core beliefs about management is the importance of metrics and measuring what you do. You may have noticed in my last posting that we measure user satisfaction with their work environment before and after any office is converted to an iWork environment. We also do an annual iWork survey. I am absolutely convinced that having these metrics si a big part of why iwork has been successful at Sun. Anytime people start talking about why or how iWork works or doesn't work. We can provide them with data not just opinions. Data is so much more powerful than opinions when you are debating something.

Another reason metrics are important is that they help focus an organization on what is important. Bill Vass, our CIO, has published a Top 10 Rules for executives to Succeed with Technology rule number 8 is you manage what you measure. I've saw this work when I was on Bill's staff before he bacame the CIO and I've seen this work in my own organization. We once had an outsource vendor come in that was doing a horrible job. From the beginning we measured their performance and it the data gave us the ability to manage and improve their performance. When a customer support organization measures customer satisfaction then customer satisfaction gets better. The list of examples is endless. You manage what you measure.

We are talking about how we can improve the satisfaction with iWork next year. Something that I think we might do is create a iWork issues desk. It would be an escalation point for anyone is having a problem with iWork. People get problems resolved but we will also analyze and report on what the most common problems are what the root causes are. We can then work to fix the root causes. Many of us have opinions about what our biggest problems are but this will give us data to help us fix them.