Metrics Management

Benchmarking and analysis of KPI’s against best practices is critical to the success of any internal service delivery organization. Almost every other organization has some sort of KPI’s of some sort in place to measure and monitor performance. Metrics management is also key skills to successful Solution Delivery role.

Six Sigma advocates three levels of metrics: business level metrics, operations level metrics and process metrics. Some of the metrics Six Sigma suggests are here.

Business Level Metrics

These metrics are typically financial and operational summaries for shareholders and management. Balanced scorecards is widely used for business level metrics. IT can be viewed either as a cost center or a profit center in companies. Based on this financial management for solution delivery is responsible for:

• Estimating costs of projects accurately working with vendors, where necessary
• Costs of providing services and undertaking projects fall withing approved budgets
• Tracking expenses against allocated budgets
• Helping Senior Management understand the total cost of completing an initiative
• Plan IT costs for maintaining and improving ongoing services
• Charge back IT investments to business units, where applicable

Operations Level Metrics

These relate to cost, time and resource to produce products and maintain services. Examples specific to IT include:

• Resource utilization metrics
• SLA Metrics
• Capacity Metrics
• Availably Metrics
• Service Continuity Metrics

Process Metrics

These are detailed metrics form process level. Examples include

• Agility in responding to a change
• Reduce total released defects, Total Containment Effectiveness (TCE)
• Fix defects closer to origin, Phase Containment Effectiveness (PCE)
• Compare implementations within company, Function Point Defects per KLOC
• Benchmark with other companies, Six Sigma that tracks Defects per Million Opportunities (DPMO)