Conversations from the Mirror42 Team

This article describes the concepts of Critical Succes Factors (CSF’s), Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s), Metrics, and Outcomes & Benefits. It describes these concepts and it includes some examples within the context of IT service management.

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p>KPI Library News, October 4 2007

The best rated KPIs in the category ‘IT Management’ as rated by our users are as follows:

This interesting blog post comments on choosing Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) wisely to avoid an information overload. Although focused on supply chain management I believe this principle applies when measuring any business process.

“Following Pareto’s Principle and focusing on the 20% of metrics that are actually telling you how 80% [...] of business performance is actually being generated does deliver better results. The issue will become what are you going to use? Concentrating on the basics will provide a far better [...] dashboard to equip managers to focus on the real drivers of the [...] process.“

“Look to provide more than this and you are heading into information replication and data overload resulting in management delays in exercising decision making power and confusion over what the metrics are actually trying to tell you.“

A list of 10 characteristics of a good KPI published by TDWI:

#1. KPIs Reflect Strategic Value Drivers
#2. KPIs Are Defined by “Executives”
#3. KPIs Cascade throughout an Organization
#4. KPIs Are Based on Corporate Standards
#5. KPIs Are Based on Valid Data
#6. KPIs Must Be Easy to Comprehend
#7. KPIs Are Always Relevant
#8. KPIs Provide Context
#9. KPIs Empower Users
#10. KPIs Lead to Positive Action