Metrics with no baseline

Most organisations start a metrics programme without baselining their current performance. Although quite a few people get their knickers in a twist about this ('How can you measure anything if you don't have a baseline??!!), it may not be good, but neither is it fatal …

Here are some methods for creating a perfectly credible metrics programme with no baselines:

1. Decide it doesn’t need a baseline. Sometime trends are not important to the problem you are trying to solve.
2. Estimate the baseline from indicative data. For example, financial figures are frequently good indicators, even if they are inherently indirect measures of what you are really interested in.
3. Don’t create a baseline – measure from Day 1 only. Just worry about getting better or worse.
4. Review a sample of the existing population, and treat that as your baseline. Just make sure that your sampling is meaningful, which is not as easy a thing as it sounds.
5. Adopt industry standards. They may not represent the best, but they are not a bad starting point.
6. Start from targets, not baselines. That way you'll have something to move towards rather than away from, which is lot more positive.
7. Don't even measure. Sometimes you just know what needs doing!