post 0 of metrics categories + new tag

_posts/2022-05-10-categories-metrics.md

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+---
+layout: post
+title: "The 5 Categories of Engineering Metrics"
+date: 2022-05-10
+permalink: /articles/five-categories-engineering-metrics
+comments: true
+tags: guest-post metrics series-metrics-categories
+---
+
+As [Mojtaba Hosseini helps guide Zapier]({% post_url 2022-03-30-metricsep1 %}) toward being a more data- and metrics-driven engineering organization, and as teams continue to add and use metrics, he finds that they sometimes come across this question: _What other metrics should I be looking out for and using?_ 
+
+Let's join Mojtaba in another guest series as he explores the 5 categories of metrics for engineering that can help teams diversify and balance their metrics!
+
+But first, an analogy...
+
+## An Analogy
+
+Think of a car’s main dashboard:
+
+<div id="blog-photo">
+ <img src="https://cdn.zappy.app/11e732ad5dfd5a2172935a9fec29785f.png" alt="" width="400" height="300">
+</div>
+
+There are many indicators and dials, each helping the driver in different ways:
+
+- **Speed and performance:** how fast is the car going? How hard is the engine working?
+- **Maintenance:** engine health, oil and battery health, gasoline level, engine temperature.
+- **Status:** doors, trunk, hood open/close, lights on/off, indicators on/off, hand-brake on/off.
+
+The more complex the car, the more dials and dashboards within these categories. If a driver only has access to one category, they can damage the car (or worse).
+
+## The 5 Categories of Engineering Metrics
+
+There are arguably 5 categories of metrics that engineering teams can use. 
+
+### 1. Customer Metrics
+
+These metrics are focused on gauging how the team’s customers are doing. Metrics in this category include:
+
+- Customer Net Promoter Scores (NPS)
+- [Product HEART metrics](https://www.productplan.com/glossary/heart-framework/): Happiness, Engagement, Adoption, Retention, Task Success
+- Service Level Indicators (SLI) around how quickly we respond to customer queries
+
+<div id="blog-photo">
+ <img src="https://cdn.zappy.app/b2d35ad4ca39243465da769d0754ddd9.png" alt="" width="400" height="300">
+</div>
+
+These are often considered some of the most important metrics for a team since they are concerned with the team’s customers. However, these metrics can be lagging indicators and may not give a team enough insight into why customers are happy (or not). 
+
+### 2. Team Workload Metrics
+
+Some teams find it useful to measure the workload of the team and gain insight into the various categories of workload. For example:
+
+- % of feature work vs non-feature work
+- Support load on the team and its impact on capacity
+- Bug-fixing load on the team and its impact on capacity
+- % Tactical vs Strategic work
+
+<div id="blog-photo">
+ <img src="https://cdn.zappy.app/d5639d228ab248ad9ad0bd7bc57ea712.png" alt="" width="400" height="300">
+</div>
+
+These metrics can help teams understand and articulate their pain-points, and can even sometimes be tied to customer metrics. They can also sometimes reveal issues and bottlenecks outside of the team that impact the workload placed on the team. 
+
+### 3. Team Performance Metrics
+
+If Team Workload metrics measure the input of work into a team, Team Performance metrics aim to see how well the team is dealing with their workload. For example:
+
+- Cycle Time and Throughput and Work-In-Progress (WIP) size: how a team works through its workload
+- 4 DORA metrics: how quickly and often a team deploys to production and the quality of those deployments
+- Team Velocity: the average velocity of completing stories
+
+<div id="blog-photo">
+ <img src="https://cdn.zappy.app/f4d23e2a1750ac50e35ba2f9336f3f29.png" alt="" width="400" height="300">
+</div>
+
+[These metrics are typically the ones most in danger of being incorrectly used by management - and at worst weaponized]({% post_url 2022-01-18-pitfalls-of-engineering-metrics %}). When used properly, they are great companion metrics to Team Workload and Customer Metrics.
+
+### 4. Service Metrics
+
+Software teams can also measure the health of the services they own. For example:
+
+- Resource usage (CPU/Memory): how much the service uses resources, typically viewed over time
+- (Cloud) cost: the cost of resources (typically broken down further) and typically viewed over time
+- Service uptime: the % of time a service is up
+- Service error rates: how often a service errors out or times out
+
+See [this article](https://aws.amazon.com/builders-library/building-dashboards-for-operational-visibility/) from Amazon on the various levels of service metrics and creating dashboards for operational visibility. 
+
+Note that for some teams, these service metrics have direct or indirect relationship to customer metrics - and may even _be_ customer metrics when customers are the direct user of a service.
+
+### 5. Team Happiness/Engagement
+
+Another category of metrics revolves around the team’s engagement and happiness. Some examples include:
+- Employee engagement surveys
+- High Functioning team surveys
+- Ambiguity of workload and strategy surveys
+
+<div id="blog-photo">
+ <img src="https://cdn.zappy.app/ddbe4496d05302515c3a82e60dfd8e8b.png" alt="" width="450" height="300">
+</div>
+
+These metrics aim to balance some of the performance, workload, and customer metrics with team engagement. For example, engaged teams often are high-performing teams. 
+
+## How to Use the 5 Categories
+
+Tune in to the next post to get ideas on how you use these five categories of metrics to balance each other!

tag/series-metrics-categories.md

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+---
+layout: tagpage
+title: "Tag: series-metrics-categories"
+tag: series-metrics-categories
+robots: noindex
+---