By Malcom Fry

Ancient civilizations divided the circle into 366 degrees, not 360.Why? Because ancient measurements were based on physical dimensions. Watch the horizon for a full year, and you will observe 366 sunrises. For this reason, the earliest divisions of the circle used 366 degrees. Later, the Sumerians lopped off the extra 6 degrees, mainly to simplify their mathematical calculations. In other words, the idea that a circle contains 360 degrees is simply a historical convention.

What does this mean for today’s CIO? Plenty. One of the longest-standing conventions in IT concerns the structure and application of metrics. Many of the IT metrics in use today have been with us from Day One — whenever that was; and although they are invaluable, they are almost entirely performance-based.

Over time, IT complexity Has made it harder to break away from these measures. Many efforts are still focused on improving the performance metrics of IT. Meanwhile, the very notion of service-orientation or value-based measurements is either neglected or ignored. The challenge for today’s CIO is to find the “extra” 6 degrees in the IT circle and question the conventional metrics of IT. What might these 6 degrees be? Let’s take a look.

1. Find a New Language
It is not just the metrics that are at fault, but also the language used within IT. CIOs must replace the old, conventional IT-focused jargon with terminology that the customer can understand—and that focuses IT attention onto the business. For example, Service Level Agreements could be better described as Business Commitments. This would shift IT’s focus to providing services and resources to customers.

2. Build a Quality-Based Culture
Metrics not only illustrate the state of play, but also drive behavior patterns in IT. For example, if a service desk is driven by performance, why would IT need to improve quality? The conventional service desk metrics concentrate on “time to answer” and “first-level incident solving,” rather than on reducing the number of incidents or proactively anticipating and resolving incidents.

3. Pave a Two-Way Street
CIOs need to understand and measure what the business expects to receive as valued IT services. For example, quality-based metrics could include no failed changes, incident reduction, business-priority planning and collaborative IT investment planning. The key is to introduce metrics that drive IT service quality to the same standards achieved by IT performance.

4. Put Contributions Into Context
IT services are just one of the components that contribute to the business supply chain. Success comes from managing and measuring the complete supply chain; this means IT must create metrics that relate to business metrics.

Typically, these are value + cost/risk = common alignment of goals. The key here is to relate metrics to a business supply chain. For example, IT metrics would be reported against specific services as they relate to a business supply chain, not only how they relate to IT departments or technologies.

5. Create a Common Currency
Managing cost has always been a challenge for CIOs, one that just seems to get harder. This often happens because the CIO is concentrating on return on investment (ROI) while forgetting about total cost of ownership (TCO). ROI is aimed at the return on a project or investment, but the true cost is the price of supporting that investment over time. For example, while a new service may have an overall ROI of $250,000, if the TCO is $40,000 a month, then the ROI savings will be eradicated in less than a year. To get a clearer, more accurate picture, CIOs should measure the TCO of all services and systems on a monthly basis.

6. Establish a Value Scorecard
IT metrics are a vital resource for Business managers to effectively plan and control their environment. CIOs must work with their business managers to determine which reports these managers need from IT. Then, the CIOs should present these reports using the information noted above and deliver them using terms the business readily understands.

Of course, CIOs should not focus only on these missing 6 degrees. The larger point is that CIOs need to first recognize that conventional measurements of IT are limited and then work toward a better, more business-oriented set of metrics based on service and value.

Malcolm Fry is an IT expert based in the U.K.