Sunday February 25, 2007

Metricspalooza
I was going to write an entry listing the top five things I've learned so far about managing a emetrics group, but I'm feeling kinda lazy, so I think I'll start with two.  I can add the other three next time just to increase the suspense (and after I think of three more).

Punchin' Out Chryslers:  The beginning of the month is a very busy time for my group.  We have numerous reports that we need to produce, each one targeted for a different audience and containing mainly different data.  And everybody wants their reports done right away. 

Of course, there's only so much you can do all at the same time, and only so much you can automate.  Sure, you can create pretty automated dashboards from web analytics tools, but not every piece of data spits out of such a tool, plus the real value is in taking the time to review the data,  interpret it, and boil its essence down to a one sentence business friendly sound bite.  No analytics tool will do that for you.

Thus, you need to think in terms of metrics production, like you were running a factory.  Reports need to be production friendly, there needs to be schedules that everybody knows they need to meet, and all hands need to pitch in to spread the work around so it can be done quickly. And you have to keep looking for ways to make this all run like a better oiled machine because requirements keep changing and new metrics requests keep coming.  Which leads me to point number two...

Prune The Tree:  It has become apparent to me that people are good at asking for more metrics, but rarely volunteer to let you stop producing any. 

There is a constant  desire to know the next thing, to know more, to follow the latest new project or initiative.  Quite quickly a five page report becomes fifteen and too much for any reasonable person to read (and a production burden...see Point One above). 

So, you have to prune back the charts and data that have lost their novelty and impact.  Alas, attention spans are short and charts that show an essentially flat trend line just don't  garner much interest or action.  Identifying these less useful metrics and trimming them away is a necessary and sometimes delicate action you have to take.


( Feb 25 2007, 02:10:17 PM MST ) Permalink