Executives like metrics tied to business value – who knew?

Blogger: Eric Maiwald

Listening to this morning’s speakers in the metrics track was interesting. First Pete Lindstrom (SRMS Senior Analyst) discussed the need for strategic metrics. Then Ken Anderson (Burton Group Executive Strategist) told us how executives look at metrics and what they are likely to ask when they are shown tactical and technical data. Executives, he said, were looking for something they could understand in a business context. Then Matthew Rosenquist of Intel discussed metrics Intel used when they planned to implement security controls to improve availability in factories. The examples Matthew clearly showed how the metrics tied directly to business objectives (in this case availability) were effective in convincing executives to fund security controls. Matthew also mentioned that the initial metrics he used to baseline the existing state of availability were based on business metrics – i.e. metrics that already existed because availability was a business objective.