Pocket Guide to Identifying Great KPIs
Here’s a quick post sharing a printable reference for establishing clean, clear, and appropriate KPIs for a project. This was something that Matt Coen, one of my peers at Resource Interactive, and I developed in response to some internal requests coming out of a measurement class that we teach both internally and for some of our clients. But, we agreed it was worth sharing with the broader measurement community. The goal was to put something in the hands of analysts or marketers that would actually give a practical guide to the questions to ask when heading into a project to ensure the establishment of effective KPIs up front.
I see this as a complement to one of my favorite Avinash Kaushik posts, which I think I’ve been referencing almost since he wrote it…and I now realize that was over three years ago! The meat of the post is his list of “four attributes of a great metric” (they’re Uncomplex, Relevant, Timely, and “Instantly Useful”). I see this guide as a guide to how to ask the right questions such that you wind up with great KPIs (it works for non-KPI measures, too, but the focus is on KPIs specifically). It’s not rocket science by any means, but it’s handy! Click on the image for a larger version, but see below if you want to print it.
A small (half-a-page), black-and-white version of the guide is available in this PDF. The PDF actually has the same diagram twice. Print it, cut it in half, and pass the second diagram along to a colleague who might find it handy!
What do you think? What’s missing?
