Get SMART: Make sure you have quantifiable objectives for your SharePoint solution!

Practical guidance for SharePoint metrics

It's important to make sure that you have meaningful and realistic objectives for your SharePoint solution. If you want business decision makers to pay attention, your objectives need a measurable target.

In 2009, strategy consulting firm McKinsey conducted a survey to identify how companies are benefiting from Web 2.0 solutions. Close to 70% of the respondents reported that their companies have gained measurable business results, including:

• More innovative products and services
• More effective marketing
• Better access to knowledge
• Lower cost of doing business - reduction in travel and other operational costs
• Higher revenues
• Improved employee, customer, and partner satisfaction.

While it's easy to say "Yes, I want that too," it's important that you understand what these objectives mean for your business and how you specifically plan to measure your solution results.

A very well-known method for setting objectives is the SMART approach, which refers to an acronym that describes the key characteristics of meaningful objectives which are:

• Specific (concrete and well-defined)
• Measurable (quantity, comparison)
• Achievable (feasible, actionable)
• Realistic (considering resources)
• Time-bound (deadline driven)

A good objective is expressed in a SMART way. For example, a good collaboration solution can speed the time to create critical deliverables. For a consulting organization, a SMART objective for a SharePoint proposal library solution might be to reduce the average amount of time it takes to produce complex proposals by 10% in Year X. When you start with a SMART business objective, you immediately have two critical elements of your measurement plan: a baseline measure and the outcome that defines success.

I'm currently working on a white paper that describes a proven and practical approach for measuring the value of SharePoint investments that I plan to publish by the end of the summer. The measurement process is presented as a series of questions that help guide SharePoint teams or business owners through the decisions required to define, choose, and use metrics. This post is an excerpt of the discussion of question 1: What is the business objective?  I call the first question the "do not pass go, do not collect $200 " step - and if you've ever played Monopoly, you know what I mean. I don't actually consider the first question part of the measurement process - but if you don't have a critical business problem or objective that your SharePoint solution addresses, then you need to go back to the beginning to find that problem.  Be sure that you are tying your SharePoint solution to a key organizational initiative or goal. If not, you are working on a "sideshow" project - one whose funding is going to be at risk no matter what your measurement program says. (This could also become a career-limiting move.)

• Microsoft
• Collaboration
• SharePoint
• SharePoint metrics