Bob ... The other caution about measurements is that if you measure it, some ("____") will try and manage it. IT in most cases should be subject to business measures (budgets, schedules, margin, yield, utilization, revenue, quality! , profit, et al). These should be the same as the rest of the enterprise. Why not measures specific to IT? 'Cause as our friend says, "IT doesn't matter." Or said in a less inflamato Bob …The other caution about measurements is that if you measure it, some (“____”) will try and manage it. IT in most cases should be subject to business measures (budgets, schedules, margin, yield, utilization, revenue, quality! , profit, et al). These should be the same as the rest of the enterprise. Why not measures specific to IT? ‘Cause as our friend says, “IT doesn’t matter.” Or said in a less inflamatory way, IT only matters as a part of the whole, not on a stand alone basis.– From a weblog posting Bob says:This is one of those propositions that sounds enticing on the surface but doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. It’s akin to saying every part of an automobile should be assessed by identical measures – engine, tires, suspension, seats, and trunk. A whole business doesn’t consist of identical parts. It consists of functionally distinct parts that collaborate.Sure, some measures are common – adherance to budget being one of them, except that even here it doesn’t work: IT’s budget is driven by other parts of the company, where (for example) Marketing’s budget is internally controlled. Nor does IT have revenue, unless it’s being run as an independent business. If it is, the notion that it should be judged solely as part of the whole is no longer true – it’s being run as an independent business.So just as a car’s engine is judged by such measures as power-to-weight ratio while its seats are judged by comfort, Marketing and IT should be judged by measures relevant to the distinctive role each plays in the organization and the value each drives or enables.For Marketing this might be year-over-year sales change per marketing dollar spent. For IT, measures like cost per MIP (ah, the old days!) and business process cost reduction per application development dollar spent might prove useful. (Don’t hold these up to too-close scrutiny, either – IT metrics, and marketing metrics for that matter, are complex subjects that need more than this superficial treatment.) Sorry to be a killjoy. It’s what you get for prodding me onto one of my favorite soapboxes.– Bob ——– Technology Industry