«In an ideal, academic world,” said Art. “I agree that KPIs should be measured against business or operational objectives. However, we live in the real world, and many of those objectives are nearly impossible to directly measure. How can you advocate we focus on objectives we cannot measure”? “Great question,” I said. “The key is to understand that any objective has certain things that must happen for it to be achieved. These are the critical success factors, or CSFs. If you can’t directly measure the achievement of something, measure the progress towards achieving the CSFs required to make it happen.»

«There are six things we must keep in mind when dealing with KPIs, whether they are for the service desk or the entire company, we need to consider them in a specific order, just like People, Process and Tools. I put a new slide up on the screen.

• Understand what the business strategy or objective is, before worrying about how to measure it.
• Decide on how to measure the data, before worrying about how to collect it.
• Decide on how to collect the data, before worrying about how to analyze it.
• Decide on how to analyze the data, before worrying about what is actionable.
• Understand what your users need to take action, before designing how you report on it
• If at any point your KPI stops making sense, either you don’t need it, or you didn’t do a good job on the previous steps.»