Practical help with KPIs, measures and reporting
I have always thought sheep dogs were intelligent. I didn’t realise, until recently, that they are smarter than me (well, at least one is). A while ago I was walking with a friend. Her sheep dog, a Border Collie called Harvey, was with us. After 10 miles or so Harvey seemed to be flagging. She [...]
There’s a very interesting article in the Guardian on mobile software design for the real world. One of the points they make is, through watching phone users, the authors of Polar have established that 49% of users drive their phone apps with just one thumb. This is interesting to the app designers for all kinds [...]
Here’s how to fix it: A step-by-step guide to creating ‘Composite KPIs’ Time to read: 10 minutes It’s a pretty common situation. You decide to try and fit all your measures on one A4/foolscap side. After lots of haggling, and increasing use of small font sizes, you can just about squeeze everything on one page [...]
There seems to be lots of confusion and debate about what KPI really means. Here’s a short Prezi on the literal meaning of KPI along with a more useful summary in plain English. To run through the Prezi just click the arrow pointing right, at the bottom of the window.
On most projects I end up putting together an action tracker. I had a look on Google recently and couldn’t find a simple tracker template that worked well, so I designed one. It’s a little off-theme for this site, but very useful I think. Most KPI implementation work involves tracking lots of actions, so that’s [...]
I’m often asked how to create KPIs and measures. It’s not a short process, which is why most people end up brainstorming or using existing measures when they are tasked with doing this (check out this article – Six KPI Selection Traps to Avoid to see some of the other pitfalls). The good news is [...]
KPIs are the first step for improving or controlling a business. Measures are the eyes and ears of anyone who has to manage anything bigger than a one-man business. KPI management is all about using KPIs to give you a clear and honest view of whichever organisation you are looking at. I use two processes [...]
King Midas is famous for an apparently good idea – everything he touched turning to gold – with unexpected side effects – starvation. I regularly stumble across less dangerous variations on this theme, with measures that create completely unintended consequences. I’m looking for your favourite examples of bad measures, KPIs or metrics. The winner will [...]
5S is a tool that lots of manufacturing businesses use. It’s a funny tool as it can look quite superficial unless you have been involved in a project where it has been applied properly. What people often miss is the mindset that goes along with it. When you start living and breathing 5S some quite [...]
