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Other teams, however, put off doing the unglamorous work of removing their dependencies and instrumenting their systems. Instead, they focused too soon on the flashier work of developing new features, which enabled them to make some satisfying early progress. Their dependencies remained, however, and the continuing drag soon became apparent as the teams lost momentum.
Working Backwards
Colin Bryar and Bill Carr
Most businesses ask “how did the business do last week?” instead of “what did the customer experience last week?” If you ask the first question, you will have an implicit orientation towards internal, business-first metrics. Perhaps you might watch inventory turns, or track changes in free cash flow, or measure the performance of your warehouses. To be clear, these are all important metrics to track. But notice that if you ask “what did the customer experience last week?” you’ll measure slightly different things. And so it’s important to ask *both* questions, and to ask the ‘customer’ question *first* — it’s not for nothing that Amazon aims to be ‘Earth’s most customer-centric company.’
The Amazon Weekly Business Review
Commoncog
Based on this picture, these metrics can help you calibrate your progress:
- The total number of ideas evaluated per quarter (using, at minimum, ICE analysis and goals alignment)
- Number of ideas tested per quarter
- The number of ideas released per quarter
- Total number of tests and experiments conducted per month
- Percent of steps that generated learning (i.e., where we were able to rescore the idea and/or generate useful insights based on the evidence collected)
- Percent of ideas launched at least with a medium Confidence level (per the Confidence Meter)
- Percent of ideas released that generate measurable outcome improvements
The first four metrics are aligned with Linus Pauling’s observation that the way to have good ideas is to test many ideas.
Evidence-Guided
Itamar Gilad
...catch up on these, and many more highlights
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