Management prerequisite: Measurement

“How can we make the website faster?”

“How can we get stronger volume through the process?”

“Is this bigger than last quarter?”

None of the above questions can be answered without knowing something critical: what’s the current measurement value? After all, to make something bigger, stronger, or faster the current ability for each has to be understood.

Just like a scale without a display, a webserver (or any application) without measurements is just a box that HOPEFULLY won’t break when stood upon. Feeding code to the webserver may make it leaner… or maybe it’s fatter now, who knows?

Now check this out: management of the webserver isn’t the only reason to measure it. Sure, it’s good to know how many transactions per femtosecond the server can gobble up (operational metrics help manage, uh, operations), but there are actual BUSINESS applications to some of those as well. How many visitors to the website came back in the past week? How did their visit patterns change after that cool new feature was turned on? Oh, and what are those visit patterns anyway?

Thoughtful measurement can provide all kinds of great data. Next, it needs to become information.