I love Kaplan and Norton’s balanced scorecard concept and I have designed and implemented it several times for my clients. It calls for balancing traditional financial metrics such as cash flow and ROI with three additional dimensions: internal business processes (which I call operations), customers and learning and growth (which I call HR).
If your operations are projects (aerospace and defense, consulting and construction companies among others), then your metrics in internal business processes should be project-based metrics. I’ve developed a list of metrics that companies should use to monitor and improve project performance.
| Metric | Description |
|---|---|
| Schedule Performance | Earned value metric (SPI) or % overrun for completed projects |
| Cost Performance | Earned value metric (CPI) or % overrun for completed projects |
| Scope | % scope delivered (by features, deliverables, stories or requirements) |
| Resource Utilization | % of workable hours (typically 2,000 per year) spent on projects |
| Quality | Number of bugs or defects |
| Change Requests | Number of change requests |
| Change Request Approvals | % of change requests that were approved |
| Schedule Estimation Accuracy | Comparison of planned vs. actual by task type (coding, testing, etc.) and by person |
| Schedule Risk | Qualitative assessment of the risk to the go-live date |
| Scope Risk | Qualitative assessment of the risk of the day 1 feature set not meeting client's expectations |
| High Risks | Number of high risks |
| Risk Mitigation | Number of high risks that are "accepted" |
| Critical Issues | Number of open critical issues |
| Overdue Issue Resolution | Number of critical issues not resolved by their due date |
| Staffing Plan | Number or % of planned project positions that are filled |
| Contingency Balance | Balance of contingency funds still available |
| Deliverables Performance | Number submitted on time or late, the number of days late, the number accepted or rejected |
| Training | % of people trained |
| Customer Satisfaction | Customer and stakeholder satisfaction as determined by survey |