> From: JC Howell <orgpsych@csra.net>
>
..deleted some good insights into how metrics are often developed and the
likely consequences on the organization that agrees with my experiences
> What has proven to be a more useful approach is the development of a
> measurement system after in-depth analysis of and reflection on the
> organizational purpose, direction, and strategy. Once this system has
> been developed, the most probable underlying systems are indentified and
> interventions to influence these systems in desired directions are
> formulated. How these systems are responding is the subject of
> sub-measures.
The ami consortium (ami stands for "application of metrics in industry",
and, yes, it is intentionally lower case :-) last year published the
second version of their ami Handbook, which maps the steps for developing
metrics in the manner Cylde recommends above. Their approach is based on
Victor Basili's Goal-Question-Metric paradigm. This has been refined
through the use in and feedback from many private sector companies. I have
used the first version of their handbook and recommend it highly.
Basically, it is a 12 step process (yes, yes, I know! :-) with four parts:
assess (your environment and validate your primary goals), analyze (your
goals to determine what questions you need to answer to determine how well
you are doing), metricate (plan, collect and validate your data) and
improve. The ami User Group has a web page:
<A HREF="http://www.sbu.ac.uk/~csse/ami.html">ami</A>
and their snail mail address is:
The ami User Group
CSSE
South Bank University
103 Borough Road
London SE1 OAA
United Kingdom
You can contact them for (much!) more information.
Cheers,
Dave
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