Depressingly, I suspect an executive would consider me far less productive because I only did 5 lines of change and the junior dev would have done thousands…
The first question I ask about any analytics requests is what you’re trying to do with the results, what business question you want to answer. The second is how the analytics question relates to that business question.
It’s very easy to ask a question, look for a way to measure the answer, find something you can measure and start looking for the best way to ask for that measure. It implicitly assumes that “I need to measure an answer -> I can measure this -> this is the answer”, but as you point out, this isn’t a valid implication.
My worst enemy is the sentiment “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” Curse every MBA that repeats it like a mantra, in the name of the Stocks and the Shareholder Value and the Holy KPI.
Yes, some measures can be valuable indicators, if contextualised correctly, but not everything that has to be managed can be measured effectively. To grasp for measures anyway twists your sight away from the actual, non-measured facts.
The first question I ask about any analytics requests is what you’re trying to do with the results, what business question you want to answer. The second is how the analytics question relates to that business question.
It’s very easy to ask a question, look for a way to measure the answer, find something you can measure and start looking for the best way to ask for that measure. It implicitly assumes that “I need to measure an answer -> I can measure this -> this is the answer”, but as you point out, this isn’t a valid implication.
My worst enemy is the sentiment “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” Curse every MBA that repeats it like a mantra, in the name of the Stocks and the Shareholder Value and the Holy KPI.
Yes, some measures can be valuable indicators, if contextualised correctly, but not everything that has to be managed can be measured effectively. To grasp for measures anyway twists your sight away from the actual, non-measured facts.