I have been working on methods to benchmark the Windows infrastructure team at work and I have not been finding much luck finding existing metrics. I was not too happy with the last Gartner review of our IT department, but perhaps that is all that is out there. I have developed some thoughts on the matter and once I am fairly certain they make sense I will post them here.
I have come across a pretty interesting book on measuring business processes. It is How to Measure Anything: Finding the Value of “Intangibles” in Business. The book walks you through quantitative decision making and how to do this with things that you might have previously thought were immeasurable.
I just read Leadership and self-deception : getting out of the box and I am sure I will have to read it a few more times to have it sink in, but I like what I got out of it so far. I like that it goes beyond “don’t be selfish” to talk about the ways that a mindset can color our perceptions of other people. It hit pretty close to home for me and I am glad to have found it.
It amazes me the amount of incorrect information that is put on user forums. There are always mistakes and I have seen some posts where people realize and correct their errors. Primarily though, I see people ranting about “the correct way” when that way is not based in product knowledge, but rather on “it seemed to work”.
This reminds me of the time I went to the pet store to buy some activated charcoal after my dog ate some wild mushrooms. The box I was given was regular charcoal, but the employee assured me that it was the same thing because she had used it and her dog did not die.
Just because “it seems to work” does not mean that what you did was correct.