How to improve KPIs for your IT guys

Trust is one of the most important factors in any relationship, especially one between an employer and employee, as it involves investment of hard-earned money. However, this trust is put to test when visibility of work effort is compromised, such as when the expertise of the two individuals is different, or when there is an inconsistency between the expectation and reality of the full scope of work, time and effort needed to manage projects.

While this can exist in every company, one department where this is seen most often is the tech department in companies. A CEO or managing partner is not always an IT expert. In fact, very few people in other departments can understand the scope of IT tasks, and the efforts needed. As such, the work it takes to do a task by the IT can often be misjudged, leading to disagreements and increased stress levels.

As any employee is judged by their KPIs, it is necessary to build them better, and move away from the ones that have been used since decades, so as to improve the overall performance of the company.

Traditional KPIs of companies often depend upon tickets and bugs, such as number of tickets resolved, the time taken to resolve them, discovering bugs and fixing them.

However, while they worked for big enterprises with hundreds of employees, they are not ideal for small businesses, where one or two people handle the job descriptions of a lot more.

Following are some pointers to improve the KPIs for your IT departments:

1. Set up weekly KPI meetings with the team.

During these meetings, you track the key KPIs that you and the team are focusing on. This way, you do not lose track of everything that is going on, and can change course if something is going better or worse than expected. Communication is key to being on the same page, and expectations should be set accordingly. More importantly, you have the opportunity to talk to people why they are not meeting a certain KPI – there could be a variety of different answers that you might have never thought of.

2. Make KPIs quantifiable.

When key metrics are tracked in a measurable way, it becomes much easier. A KPI such as “make the user experience better” is really subjective, and not really clear. If you instead look at something along the lines of “what percentages of app reviews is positive”, you can clearly track and present that in a clear way – it is much less confusing and leaves less room for interpretation.

3. Do not focus on too many KPIs.

While it is important that many aspects of the business are going well, setting too many KPIs will have an adverse effect. When people focus on 1-3 main KPIs all the time, they will keep in mind how their behaviour impacts those KPIs. If they have 20 to worry about, on the other hand, it is unclear which are the most important ones, and people lose sight of the overall picture.

With these measures, your team should be better equipped to fulfil your KPIs and be on the same page when it comes to the goals of the team and company.