Selecting Metrics for Your Organization

Overview

This chapter offers some guidelines for metrics to use in your organization. It presents some metrics that are commonly collected in organizations, some tips on how to devise metrics, and some advice on structuring your metrics process.

We could not possibly discuss everything necessary to set up and administer a top- notch metrics program in one small chapter. To that end, we have listed several books on the subject in the Summary section of this chapter.

For a discussion on the importance of collecting consistent data, and when and how to collect that data, read Chapter 18 ("Statistical Process Control") and Chapter 19 ("A High Maturity Perspective"). By the way, you will find that we use the terms "measurement" and "metric" interchangeably. We apologize if this offends you, but we decided that we really do not want to weigh in on the war of words around measurement. We expect our readers to be smart enough to make the translation from the word "metric" to "measure," if they prefer.