What really counts for IT organizations? In most cases, the business struggles to get the most value from IT. They do their best to develop requirements, road maps and strong relationships, but still, they struggle with missed expectations.
So, these organizations gravitate towards measures like budget, schedule, scope and bug counts. Business partners like these measures because they reflect IT's ability to deliver against what they promised and IT likes them because they can influence the scores.
But many organizations are finding that these "deliver on promise" measures are unsatisfying and often lead to unintended results. We need to find better measures of success. Without them, improving IT performance is sort of like shooting arrows in the dark at an unseen target.
Asking business partners, executives as well as practitioners, how they feel about IT performance is a great start. Here are the key things to measure:
Business Value Delivered
Agility and Responsiveness
Reputation
Net Promoter Score
Overall Sentiment
What do you think? How would you measure IT success?