Dashboards of metrics aim at providing managers and other stakeholders involved in a modernization project with the value of indicators measuring how the modernization project is progressing towards its modernization targets and in particular for measuring how well the latest modernization increment has improved (or not...) the situation.
The dashboard of metrics is based on the list of painpoints identified and priorized during the assessment phase. An analysis is performed on these painpoints
- to identify the goals, the organisation has to satisfy to remove or reduce those painpoints to an acceptable level
- to identify metrics (mesurable indicators) associated to the painpoints in order to evaluate how they are evolving during the modernization project.
For instance, in order to reduce the delivery times for a given product (goal), one can measure how the following indicators are evolving:
- the mean time to take a change request into account, to develop a solution to it, and to deploy this solution,
- the number of changes commited per day and deployed per day
- ...
A feasibility analysis is performed to ensure the identified metrics are technically feasible in the organization and manageable for the involved staff specifically if new data need to be collected by them.
Finally dashboards are designed and implemented by identifying and combining several components that will be responsible for collecting and displaying the metrics. They typîcally include customization of off-the-shelf components and customization to whom will use a specific dashboard: the dashboard for a general manager typically will not include details that an IT manager will be interested in.
The development of dashboards can also be set up incrementally according to the painpoint priorities addressed successively through the modernization iterations.
What is the typical effort for this activity ?
Identitying the painpoints on which the modernization project shall focus and on wich the dashboard is developed is part of the initial assessment phase.
The effort for designing and implementing the dashboard depends on several factors:
- the availability of data to be collected: are they already available and directly accessible in the organization or do we need to set up a new process to collect them?
- the availability of off-the-shelf components that can be integrated in the dashboard and how easily they can be connected to data sources.
What are the possible dependencies with other activities ?
As mentioned above, it strongly relies on the initial assessment phase which identifies and priorize the painpoints on which the modernization project has to focus.
What expertise is required to achieve this activity ?
- Expertise in analysis to convert painpoints into metrics
- Expertise in metrics specification
- Technical expertise to design and implement the dashboard including collecting data, bridging data sources to dashboard components, defining front-end on top of back-end services, ...
Is this activity optional, recommended or mandatory?
This activity is highly recommended to favor the initial management buy-in of the modernization approach and enable management and all involved stakeholders to visualize progress made by the modernization team during the project.
Is there a recommended methodology to support this activity ?
Goal-Question-Metrics has revealed to be an adequate methodology to support the identification of the needed metrics.
A description of GQM is given in Context Analysis
What is the recommended tooling for this activity ?
Objectiver has revealed to be useful to graphically represent reusable goals, questions and metrics.