What are the most effective ways to communicate IT automation metrics?

1 Define your objectives

Before you start collecting and reporting IT automation metrics, you need to define what are your objectives and how they align with the business or organizational goals. For example, you may want to automate IT tasks to reduce costs, increase productivity, enhance quality, or comply with regulations. Your objectives will help you determine what metrics to track and how to present them. For instance, if your objective is to reduce costs, you may want to show how much time and money you saved by automating IT tasks.

2 Choose relevant metrics

When measuring the performance and outcomes of IT automation, you need to choose metrics that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and timely (SMART). Examples of such metrics include time saved, error rate, compliance rate, and customer satisfaction. Time saved measures how much time was reduced by automating IT tasks compared to manual execution. Error rate looks at how many errors or failures were prevented or fixed by automating IT tasks compared to manual execution. Compliance rate measures how well standards or regulations were adhered to by automating IT tasks compared to manual execution. Finally, customer satisfaction evaluates the quality and speed of the IT services or products delivered by automation.

4 Report and communicate results

Once you've collected and analyzed data, it's essential to report and communicate the results to your stakeholders in an easily understandable manner. You should tailor your report and communication style to their needs, expectations, and preferences. Additionally, you need to emphasize the key findings, insights, and recommendations from your data analysis, as well as how they relate to your objectives and goals. There are various formats and channels you can use to report and communicate results, such as dashboards, reports, presentations, or emails. Dashboards are interactive and dynamic displays of data using charts, graphs, or indicators. Reports are structured and detailed documents of data using text, tables, charts, or graphs. Presentations are engaging and persuasive speeches of data using slides, images, or videos. Emails are brief and informative messages of data using text, links, or attachments.

5 Evaluate and improve metrics

Finally, you need to evaluate and improve your IT automation metrics on a regular basis to ensure they are still relevant, accurate, and useful. To do this, you should monitor and review your metrics, collect feedback from stakeholders, identify gaps or issues, update and refine your metrics, test and validate them, and make sure they reflect the changes and trends in your IT automation processes. You can use surveys to collect opinions from stakeholders, audits to check the quality of your metrics, and tests to measure their reliability.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?