Escape from KPI purgatory

What if we made this easier?

Data teams are terrible at measuring their own success and progress.

You come up with a splattering of metrics and throw them on a dashboard to track “progress”.

Or you do nothing at all and hope for the best.

So you try for KPIs.

And try to think of everything that is “key” or relates to “performance”. The end result is a random assortment of things that seem important. Some are going up and some are going down. What do we do with them? Nobody knows.

So you try for OKRs.

The framework helps you identify important things you want to focus on. However, the ambiguous nature of the key results makes it difficult to quantify results. The art of OKRs feels complex to learn and you don’t have 18 months to get over the learning curve.

Here’s a simpler framework to try. It’s the 1-2-3-4 Roadtrip Method

• Define 1 (and only one) Destination Metric. This is your terminal goal for your team. It’s not progress toward something else, it’s the end purpose.

• Define (up to) 2 Waypoint Metrics. Waypoints are key markers along a journey. These are crucial for tracking your progress toward your Destination Metric.

• Define (up to) 3 Turn Signal Metrics. These are decision metrics. They are specifically defined for to alert you when you hit an important decision point.

• Define (up to) 4 Gauge Metrics. A gauge is an indicator of what’s happening operationally on your journey. What’s your speed? How much gas is left in the tank? Important to have identified, but pointless to stare at constantly.

It seems easy at first. But where I see most data teams struggle with is defining a Destination. Consequentially, the rest of the metrics fall down flat.

Tomorrow we’ll talk more about how to pick a destination metric.

I’m here,

Sawyer