Assignment 7 Granth

The Business Case

When measurement is done before an intervention is agreed on or funded, the result is a business case that describes the need for an intervention and presents an argument for action. The information in the business case should come from more than one source, such as through observations, interviews, or surveys. The business case describes the current condition (also known as the baseline) and what is to be gained if action is taken (the intended results). Ideally it should contain the leading and lagging indicators of success. Leading indicators are interim results or behaviors that predict ultimate success, such as the rate of adoption by the target audience and trends in consumer survey data. This information is essential to the next phase of measurement activity. Lagging indicators are the results that occur at the end of an agreed-upon period of time, such as the annual turnover rate, healthcare costs, or dollar volume of sales.

Formative Evaluation

Measurement should happen during the design and development of an intervention and its components to confirm the project is on track and to identify the need for corrective action. Measurement at this time is called formative or in-process evaluation. It includes tests of usability, compatibility, and feasibility. During the design and development phase, assumptions were made that need to be confirmed: for example, how easy it is for the user to use the intervention or its components compared to what was intended and if the interface between the intervention’s technologies works as intended. Measurement at this phase increases the odds that an intervention will be successful.

Summative or Confirmative Evaluation

Measurement should occur once an intervention is launched and at predetermined times thereafter to measure the results and confirm the intervention is working as planned. Measurement at this time also identifies any unintended consequences (good and bad), such as adoption by people beyond the target audience or an increase in indirect costs by a user group. As a performance consultant, you are in an ideal position to show the purpose, benefits, and outputs of measuring during all three phases.

HOW TO SELECT CRITERIA

One of the hardest parts of measuring anything is knowing what to use as criteria. When should the criterion be money? When should it be time? When should it be compliance, customer satisfaction, volume, or something else? As a performance consultant, your goal is to identify sufficient criteria to corroborate the results. You want an accurate picture of the situation. Following are discussions of some possible measurement criteria.

Costs

All interventions affect costs in one or more ways. They can eliminate costs, reduce costs, avoid costs, or shift costs to someone else or to a later time. An intervention affects costs if it:

· Saved time (time is money)

· Eliminated activities such as checking work fewer times or reducing the number of steps in a process (activities consume resources)

· Improved product performance such as lengthening the shelf life or reducing the amount of maintenance required

· Improved processes, such as eliminating the need for checking, waiting, or handling, or resulted in products and services that deviated less from standard

· Increased human productivity (for example, increasing the unit of work per hour)

I pay particular attention to whether the intervention shifted costs. This happens when the intervention increases the number of activities to be performed by others (such as forcing them to do more checking, take more steps to do their work, wait longer, use more resources, or do work they would not ordinarily have to do). Shifting costs also happens when others are forced to use more resources or more expensive resources than they have in the past.

Another consideration is the cost of the intervention itself. What did it cost to develop, and what did it cost to implement? Be sure to include both direct costs (such as consultant or vendor fees or any resource dedicated to the project) and indirect costs (for example, administrative and management time). How do these costs compare to the cost of the problem? What other costs did the intervention affect?

Satisfaction

Next, I think about how satisfied all the vested parties are with the results of the intervention—the consumers, internal customers, management, and the employees performing the job. As a criterion, satisfaction is more than how happy people are; it includes how they feel about the intervention, how it was developed, who was involved, and how it was implemented. Another component of satisfaction is how confident the vested parties are that the program will fulfill its promise. A third component is image. In this case, you find out how strongly people want to be associated with the intervention. If the intervention is popular, more people will want it known that they played a role in its identification, development, or deployment. If it is unpopular, they will disassociate themselves from it.

Rate of Adoption or Use

Interventions work only if people do them, use them, or embrace them as part of doing business. Consider measuring who is using the intervention, how many are using it, and how often they are using it.

Goal Accomplishment

Behind every intervention there should have been a need to satisfy, an issue to resolve, an opportunity to seize, or a problem to be avoided. The criterion then becomes what the client will accept as evidence the intervention achieved its purpose.

THE COMMON MEASURES, CRITERIA, AND METRICS JOB AID

Figure 9.2  mirrors the first four columns of the scorecard introduced in Chapter Seven for needs assessment. It contains a more detailed list of what commonly gets measured, the criteria used, and possible metrics. Use it with your team and client to come up with more ways to measure what happened, what changed, and what still needs attention. Add any criteria and metrics you would like so that it meets your needs. Discuss what might be a feasible way to measure the project you are working on.

Figure 9.2 . Measures, Criteria, and Metrics Scorecard