Performance Measurement Development

Financial Indices

All executives place a heavy emphasis on IT programs and projects remaining on target in regard to their budget. As a result, we found most of the use of and impetus for the development, implementation, and utilization of Performance Measures revolves around financial factors.

Strategic Factors

All interviewees discussed beyond financial goals and factors (every organization had reduced cost as an important goal) there were strategic goals that were endemic to their enterprise and its mission. These goals are formulated through elaborate strategic planning processes.

Performance measures, especially IT PM’s, need to be aligned to these goals and objectives. “Performance Measurement is not an end, but rather the means to achieving better management results,” according to the Government Accountability Office.

External Benchmarks and Standards

Most organizations view that the external measures, like scorecards, benchmarks, and standards, are good baselines to begin an analysis or measurement process; however, independent PM’s are needed to capture all the needed information.

Many interviewees commented that their adopted metrics were NOT inconsistent with the metrics established by these external studies and standards organizations.

Internal Metric Development

90% of all interviewees believed that “internal metric generation” was the preferred method of developing Performance Measures.

In our study, internal metric generation stood for the development of metrics by organizational constituents - not borrowing metrics from external sources. This was primarily done from “bottom-up” recommendations from operational or staff managers or technical experts. When these were developed at the executive level, most of the time they were conceived with staff discussion and involvement.

IT Committees, councils, and roundtables were the primary vehicle for collecting these metrics.

NEXT: I will discuss Performance Measure Implementation.