My very first conference talk ever was on metrics. It was probably 2000 or 2001, and it was a mediocre at best presentation with too many bullet points and not enough entertainment. Despite my inexperience, the point was clear - measure things that matter.

I spent a lot of time over the years since then working on various metrics programs - sometimes shutting them down, but mostly, working with teams on how to use metrics to answer questions.

Measure what Matters

The simple yet often ignored advice on measurement is to measure things that truly matter. Many organizations fall into the trap of measuring whatever is easy, hoping that interesting insights will emerge. I call these 'jeopardy metrics' because they provide answers without clearly defined questions.

I wrote an article just short of twenty years ago on this subject (it’s not horrible if you want to read it). I wrote about the problem of measuring the wrong things and talked about the Goal-Question-Metric (GQM) approach from Vict…