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Performance Measures Indicating IT Project Effectiveness and Investment Success

Performance measures are essential tools that show how something is performing. For example, a speedometer on an automobile tells us how fast we are moving. Furthermore, a performance measure can be used to determine how an activity is being performed. However, the performance measure or metric must be chosen with care so that it correctly indicates what it is that you are trying to measure.

For example, if you are trying to determine the fuel efficiency of an automobile, some indicators to consider would be, distance travelled, fuel expended, speed travelled, weight of car, etc. The color of the car is not a relevant indicator for fuel efficiency. Similarly, there are performance indicators that are used to measure the success of an IT project or IT investment. For example, if CPU utilization and throughput are some important aspects in embedded and other critical applications and are usually defined as requirements, meeting these requirements is essential. Other performance measures may include, depending on your specific situation, operational and maintenance cost, resource utilization, downtime, the number of trouble reports, and many others.

For IT investment, some performance measures that are typically used include, total cost to build, annual maintenance cost, savings, customer satisfaction (this category may include many other individual elements), and overhead costs, among others. We are looking for what Performance Measures you have observed, measured, or used as a part of your audit that show project or investment success.

These measures can be applied to additional sub-topics listed below:

Sub Topics

Measuring the effectiveness of Government IT Systems

Key performance indicators for an IT Project

IT Investments - How to audit an agency's IT Investment Practices

Evaluating agency IT investment maturity

Security and other issues related to IT project success