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Your organization may have already selected a preferred process improvement methodology. These methods—from Total Quality, to Six Sigma, to Lean, etc.—will help define a lot of the information you will use in your metrics. And your metrics may help define which methods will work best for your organization.

Another tool that will be encouraged by metrics and in turn will support your metric program is a training plan. Positional and personal professional development plans will directly support metrics built around the Employee Viewpoint and Process Health.

Strategic plans are a necessity for the Future Health quadrant and for the future of your organization. The metrics for strategic progress, and the strategic plan, work together to build toward a desired future.

Customer feedback, which comes in a myriad of forms, can also be driven by the Service/Product Health metric. This one is pretty obvious, but by doing metrics, you drive the organization to institute the concept of feedback into the day-to-day operations of the organization, rather than make it only an annual or event-driven activity. The organization will start to seek out, capture, and use customer feedback as a way of doing business.

A metric program will drive more than just analyzing, reporting, and investigating the things being measured. It can have side benefits as a catalyst for other improvement efforts, tools, and byproducts. It is a necessary stepping stone to developing a Product/Service Health–focused metrics program and is a great tool for maturing your organization. It will support or inspire the creation of strategic plans, process improvement efforts, service level agreements, and clear expectations. As with most improvement efforts, if done right, you will gain many side-benefits throughout the journey.

Recap

The service catalog is not a mandatory component of a metrics program. It is a useful tool, especially if your metrics are service-focused, as in a Service/ Product Health metric.

Trying to develop a service catalog can lead you into negative, resistance-laden encounters. The same FUD factors that can adversely affect your gathering of data can also negatively affect your creation of a valid catalog. But the risk is well worth it. You will benefit in many ways—from learning more about your organization and customers, to determining what you should and shouldn't be doing. The service catalog and the effort to create it, can be a catalyst for changing your organization's focus from a siloed, “me-first” attitude to one founded on teamwork. Sometimes all it takes to bring a group of people together is a common goal—and the service catalog provides that common focus.

All of the quadrants in the Answer Key can “play” in the service catalog, but it is likely that you will have either an Effectiveness- or an Efficiency-based service catalog. Remember to leverage the indirect benefits (by-products) of the process of creating and maintaining your catalog.

Conclusion

There are many mature behaviors that a metrics program can encourage and work well with. The service catalog may be the most obvious for the Service/Product Health metrics. Others fit the other quadrants of the Answer Key better, as follows:

Process Health: Process maps and definitions

Organizational Health: Professional development plans, employee feedback, and process improvement methods

Future Health: Strategic plans

The service catalog is an excellent tool for an organization seeking to do general improvement efforts. It can help the organization understand what business it's in.

By bouncing the service catalog against the organization's mission (and possibly vision), the organization can determine if it's doing the right things (Effectiveness). The details of the service catalog (who provides, to whom, with what expectations, and at what cost) can provide valuable insights by themselves if the organization is doing things the right way (Efficiency).

Establishing Standards and Benchmarks