Portfolio Metrics

As a followup to my previous post on IT Toolbox, Measuring Health, I would like to explore the question of performance statistics in a bit more detail.

Now that we've been applying quantified measurements internally for a few weeks, we are starting to notice a few things:

1. When you pick a standard profile for quantifying performance metrics, you accelerate the notion of "working together" versus "working on your own." In other words, a performance standard applied across projects in a portfolio leads to a shared understanding of performance and health, rather than an individualistic approach. These are not "my projects" but rather they are "our projects."

2. Applying a scorecard to a portfolio of projects immediately forces everyone to make sure that the data is in fact accurate. If a project shows up as "red" then everyone associated with the project immediately wants to know why. Is it actually red? What is making it red? Is the data accurate? These are all good questions.

3. As anticipated, a color coded Health Indicator immediately trains the eyes on what needs attention. Once the project data has been updated and is accurate, then folks want to drill into what is "red." Next, they want to drill into what is "yellow." The good news is that the purpose of Health Indicators is to focus team members on what needs attention, to simplify the effort to evaluate "how we are doing."

4. There appears to be a desire to create personal/private health profiles, which at this point I would judge to be a bad idea. This is a natural desire to anticipate a visible poor score. My view as of now is that the performance measures that produce the scorecard (aka red-green-yellow indicators) must behave consistently or you have confusion. If something is green at one level, but red at a lower level because of different criteria, that will lead to inconsistent communication and misleading indicators.

5. There also appears to be a tendency to say "but I know it says that the task is red, but I know it's green." Well, this is exactly what a quantitative approach is intended to address. If we use quantified methods, the health of a project or task is what it is. If it's 25% late, then it's 25% late. If we agree to change the target date for any reason at all, we can make it green again, but at least we all saw the evidence of trouble and made a clear decision together.

Clearly, this is an important shift away from traditional project assessments, which tend to be subjective and murky. It may take some time to get used to such a clear picture of performance health, but it is inevitable.

Any other observations on experiences with quantified scorecards for projects, portfolios and tasks?

Comments

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