Apdex Alliance

I’m writing a series of posts about Generalizing Apdex. This is #3.

In my previous post on Core Apdex Qualities, I set out to enumerate the essential characteristics of the Apdex metric. What aspects of the Apdex method, and the metric it produces, would make it useful for reporting measurements in domains other than the application response time, the focus of the Apdex specification today?

The Apdex goals already identified in section 2.1 of the spec are certainly a good starting point, but I felt that to properly assess where a generalized Apdex metric might potentially be applied, I needed to establish a general picture of the use of metrics and performance indicators in management. This is easier said than done. How, for example, can we discuss the applicability of an Apdex metric as a Key Performance Indicator (KPI), when no standard definition of that concept exists?

If you spend a couple of weeks sorting through Google’s ~4 million references to key performance indicators, two things will happen. First, you will see that confusion abounds; there is no generally accepted framework we can use to position Apdex. Second, you will begin to assemble your own short list of useful reading that will eventually reveal some broad conclusions about the field of management metrics. This post records my own experience doing this, with potential applications of a generalized Apdex standard in mind.

Continue reading Metrics and Performance Indicators: A Bibliography