Metrics are an actual way of defining what a knowledge management or content management project will accomplish.

In an environment of rigid budgets and high expectations, metrics are an appropriate next step for an industry that prides itself on delivering big profit. Defining metrics is not easy, however, and much study and further practical experience will be needed before implementing such measures becomes simple or every day.

Benefits of metrics

Targets to be set

Metrics provide clearly defined goals and scope for projects, allowing for more concrete design, planning and implementation. Metrics state “this is what we plan to do, and this is the benefit it will have”.

Success to be judge

Metrics provide very specific ‘success criteria’ for projects, allowing the outcomes to be assessed at the end of implementation.

ROI to be estimated

In the existing times of tight IT budgets, there is an expectation that projects will deliver quantifiable benefits. This is often defined in terms of ‘return on investment’ (ROI). Without strong metrics, estimating ROI is little more than guesswork.

Ongoing capability to be tracked

Metrics maintain to provide value beyond original implementation. Appropriate measures will rapidly highlight issues, allowing them to be determined before they grow or spread.

Lessons to be learnt

By providing an actual way of assessing the success, a diversity of approaches, a better understanding can be gained. This can then be applied when establishing new scheme.

User rankings

Subject matter experts or other reviewers can directly assess the quality of material in the content management system platform.

Edits necessary

A content management system typically provides various form of workflow capacity. Audit trails generated by this can be analyzed to settle on how many edits or reviews were essential for every piece of content. If the unique material is of a high quality, it should involve little editing.

Usability testing

This provides a realistic way of determining whether the information, and the way it is structured, can be understood by end users. Usability testing can be qualitative, with the goal of classify problems, in which the same tests are run each time and timed.

Links created

A popular page with functional information will be additional frequently linked to from other parts of the system. By measuring the number of links, the efficiency of individual pages can be determined. (Google, for example, uses this to rank its search results