time kpis teams story one security tracking

13 Outdated Tech KPIs (And What Businesses Should Track Instead)No industry in the world evolves as fast as the tech industry. Yet some techteams track the same key performance indicators they have been following sincethe middle of the last decade. While some of these metrics are still useful,others are entirely outdated.Some holdover tech KPIs offer nothing to help companies improve and, in somecases, tracking them uses up valuable time. To help IT departments that wantto drill down to access truly useful information, 13 experts from ForbesTechnology Council look at the most common outdated metrics that ITdepartments still track today and what they should focus on instead.1. Volume Of Tickets ClosedTraditional IT teams usually measure the sheer volume of tickets they close.This classic KPI fails to tell the full story of how well IT is actuallyperforming. Newer KPIs such as impact and customer satisfaction tell a richerstory about how well IT is serving the company’s workforce, which in turnelevates the company’s overall productivity. – Yu Lee, Kasasa2. Mean Time To ResolveTracking mean time to resolve is one of the common IT KPIs that in fact can domore harm than good. This metric encourages IT employees to address simple andeasy issues to keep the numbers small and ignore more complicated incidentsthat may require some thorough investigation. Such practice puts organizationsat risk of missing signs of a sophisticated cyberattack, which may result in adata breach. – Ilia Sotnikov, Netwrix3. Bug CountsMany teams are measured based on the number of bugs that make it intoproduction. Instead of focusing on defects, focus on the team’s velocity— theamount of new business value they produce in a certain time frame. There isone caveat: Teams must fix bugs before writing new code. This creates anegative feedback loop that drives quality improvement and increases quality.- Dave Todaro, Ascendle4. Reported IncidentsMany security teams measure the increase or decrease of reported incidents.That sounds reasonable, but it’s a flawed metric that does not necessarilyreflect an improved security posture because it excludes the unknown. Time isbetter spent scanning for vulnerabilities and flaws across applications andinfrastructure to ensure full visibility into risk—which is much more likelyto improve security. – Ernesto DiGiambattista, ZeroNorth5. On-Time DeliveryTracking on-time delivery has been a pretty standard KPI for IT projects.While on-time completion is important, we want the product to functionsmoothly and have cleanly written code and documentation for anybody to makesmall changes. Think of the long-term effects. A modularized project is easierand faster to upgrade. You can upgrade one component at a time withoutdisrupting the whole product. – Vikram Joshi, pulsd6. Known Security KPIsToo many organizations are still overly concerned with KPIs on known securitythreats, such as malware attacks, and addressing them with rules-basedtechnology like security information and event management tools. Whiledefending against known threats is important, companies must also concernthemselves with protecting against unknown threats—zero-day attacks, insiderthreats and the like—that conventional security KPIs ignore. – Saryu Nayyar,Gurucul7. Storage SpaceTracking storage space is now irrelevant since most cloud providers offerunlimited storage. IT teams should track user adoption and activity instead.There’s little difference in business value between 1 TB and 10 TB ofuntouched, archived files; however, there’s a massive difference between 200active users collaborating daily on a small document repository and 20 similarusers doing the same. – Stephane Donze, AODocs8. ImpressionsOne KPI that I see all the time is impressions. This can be in the form ofwebsite hits through to social media views. It has some use—like growing brandawareness for a larger company—but more often than not it’s just a metric formarketing agencies or social media marketers to look impressive. Instead,focus on engagement: If 10 people see something and one clicks, that’s who youcare about. – Artem Petrov, Reinvently9. Story PointsStory points in Scrum and Agile are no longer useful for IT teams. Storypoints are subjective estimations of effort required and can often beinaccurate measures of time. Team members often spend unnecessary time ondefining the amount of points. Instead, we like to use T-shirt sizing, whereyou give a rough user story estimate by classifying items into T-shirt sizesranging from small to large. – Ryan Chan, UpKeep Maintenance Management10. UptimeTake the amount of energy spent on maintaining and tracking 99.999% uptime anddevote half of it to connecting engineers and DevOps to customers to gaugehappiness, feature engagement and overall love of the project. Honeycomb.iohas T-shirts that say, “Nines don’t matter if users aren’t happy”—theycouldn’t be more right. – Shawn Estes, Global Agora, LLC.11. DowntimeWith the fast-paced, ever-changing nature of IT, downtime is no longerrelevant. What really matters is lost client hours of connectivity, for anyreason. If a user can’t connect to the network, can’t get an IP address orcan’t access an application, productivity suffers. AI-based network analyticsdelivers untapped insights into what’s really going on and why.12. Page ViewsPage views, in theory, seems like a great metric. You can see how many peoplevisit your site and feel good. Despite these obvious benefits, you don’t knowif these users are interested in your business. They take offense if your siteis not user-friendly. Measure how long people stay on your site and whichpages interest them. Provide mailing lists and special offers to encouragecommunication. – Arnie Gordon, Arlyn Scales13. Hours WorkedIt’s no longer relevant how much time people spend at their desks. You findpeople unable to solve one problem in an entire day and others who cancomplete their own tasks and help quite a few other colleagues in the matterof a few hours. In the technology industry today, there is scant value inhours of work and more value in efficiency, diligence, speed and accuracy.It’s a new world with new metrics. – Piyush Jha, GlobalLogic Inc.