LA CTO Forum – Metrics Discussion

Last Friday, the LA CTO Forum hosted a discussion on the various metrics used to measure ourselves and our companies. I was asked to participate, and eagerly dug into my archives. I found a bunch of old examples, sanitized them, and was struck by how much metrics evolve over the lifecycle of a company. I was inspired enough to put together a diagram that describes how the metrics for a product or startup company evolve over time. My files are here:

• The Evolution of Metrics
  
• Examples of Metrics for Startups
  

Here is a basic description of the contents of each report:

• Definitions – definitions of metrics
• Dashboard – dashboard view of key metrics
• Executive Summary – summary of key metrics
• BizDev Funnel Lite – early stage business development funnel
• BizDev Funnel – later stage business development funnel
• Marketing Funnel – early costs/revenue numbers
• Member Funnel – tracking and monetizing users
• Customer Satisfaction – customer satisfaction by product
• Customer Support Triage – large product defects, customer support in triage mode
• Customer Support Daily Recap – daily metric for support
• Customer Support Steady – later stage monitoring of support
• Operations – some simple operational metrics
• Engineering Triage – crisis-based tracking of engineering errors
• Human Resources – some basic hiring metrics
• Revenue – an early set of of metrics for revenue

You may have a different interpretation of how to measure things, so please feel free to change the parameters to suit your needs. Let me know what you think.

-=John