Capturing the relevant metrics and utilising them to make business decisions, has always been tricky. As business environments change, the question of metrics gets all the more complex.
In this webinar hosted by Aritha, Padma Satyamurthy — transformation leader at Walmart Labs India, discussed about the metrics conundrum faced by enterprises of various sizes. Based on her experience in working with various organisations, Padma set the context clear at the beginning of the webinar, by stating that she is not going to talk about what metrics to use, the formula, or the sources to capture the metrics. The focus of discussion was regarding the challenges one would encounter when going about evolving the suitable metrics with a whole enterprise picture in mind.
Padma discussed these top challenges in arriving at metrics for software teams, programs, portfolio and business:
Popularly used in analysing Baseball game performances; Padma cited how Sabermetrics evolved after closely watching the correlation of actions and outcome, followed by customization to suit the current set of goals. A recommended watch is Hollywood movie, Moneyball, that showcases how Sabermetrics was put to good use, which holds a lesson or two for the software enterprises.
As per the results of the poll during the webinar, 60% of the organisations are capturing and publishing metrics even at the business level. Which is a good number, considering that a constant watch at the performance of the overall business is very important. Padma emphasised on the importance of choosing right metrics set and the also the importance of perspective while looking at the metrics.
Padma ended the webinar by sharing this simplistic approach that has worked for her:
Start from where you are >> Focus on the Goal >> Evolve and Grow
Some of the questions that the audience asked during the webinar are captured below. If you have similar questions in mind, please watch the recording of the webinar to know the answers provided.
Goals can be long or short term. How to fix metrics in such a case?
How to handle if the top leaders aren’t interested in any metrics?
Should metrics be linked to OKRs?
In a transformation program when an organisation is new to agile ways of working how soon metrics can be introduced?
Should metrics be changed frequently?
The biggest concern one has while migrating workloads to run on Kubernetes is the way stateful workloads are handled.
Considering the 12 principles of Agile and categorising them into different organizational behaviors within a software development enterprise.
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