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Five to ten minutes of clarifications. Again, you need a facilitator. I end up doing both roles—facilitator and metric designer, and I like it that way. But if you’re doing this on your own, you’ll probably need to enlist a facilitator to help you. Once the team runs out of inputs—it could be in less than five minutes or a little more—I hit each item and ensure the meaning is clear. I allow the client(s) to delete items that they feel are “wrong,” add more, and/or modify them for clarity. I don’t allow them to delete or change anything because they don’t think it’s possible to achieve (goals) or to measure (root questions).

Five minutes grouping or categorizing the results. This step is optional. If you have identified more than ten “goals,” then there may be a benefit in organizing the items around themes. Again, a trained facilitator will be able to think on her feet here. Sometimes I simply ask the team if they see any logical groupings, rather than try to find them myself. Five minutes classifying each item as a Goal/Objective, Task, Motto/Slogan, or Measure of Success. Although the purpose was to brainstorm goals—one of the benefits of brainstorming is the identification of other related items. Goals and objectives are “achievable” items on the list you’ve captured. It is very unlikely that you’ll have strategic (long range) goals, but you may find that some are objectives needed for achieving others. I group them together and identify their classification. You’ll also find some tasks. These should be rather obvious as things that the team or you want to do. They may be process steps or just material for a “to do” list. If they fall under a goal or objective, group them accordingly. If the tasks don’t have a goal, I help them determine if there is a missing goal or if they are simply job tasks. This is not necessary for identifying root questions, but having a well-developed set of goals is useful. Some of the items will be measures of success (MoS). Basically, they are “how” you know you’ve succeeded at achieving the goal or completing the task. These measures may satisfy your desire for metrics—but they won’t be “metrics.” More on these later. Just remember that the root question may not need a metric as the answer—sometimes MoS are enough.

Five minutes per goal. So far you’ve invested about a half hour on identifying goals (and other items)—the rest of the effort may have to span across more than one meeting. Once we have goals identified, we’ll be able to identify MoS for each (some may have already been identified). These will be new items. If all you need is to track progress to the goal or to know when you’ve succeeded at achieving the goal—you can stop. You can also skip down to “how to create and collect measures” instead of developing a metric. If you have larger questions (or larger goals) a metric may be appropriate. Remember, metrics tell a complete story, using information, measures, and data. So, if you have simple, tactical goals, the need may be for measures rather than a metric. If the goal is strategic and “large” the questions will also be bigger, and likely lead to a metric. Many times the goal will generate questions, other than if the team will achieve the goal. How to achieve the goal is one possibility. Another is to determine the “why” for the goal—the reason for it. Many times these also lead to a metric.

Remember, the result of getting to the root need may not be a metric.

We’ve discussed using five “whys” to get to a root need and using or developing a strategic plan (simplified version) for getting to the root need. However, any method for eliciting requirements should work. The important thing is to get to the underlying need. The root question should address what needs to be achieved, improved, or resolved.

What is important is to remember that you can work from wherever you start back to a root question and then forward again to the metric (if necessary). I told a colleague that I wanted to write a book on metrics.