Been getting a lot of questions from subscribers of late about Performance Analytics (PA). So here's a

MEGA THREAD

to equip you with 1) Resources to amp up your tech knowledge 2) Mindsets, postures, and practices to ensure your PA ventures' success PA mindset is the most important. There's no shortage of people who can build with PA.

There's a MASSIVE shortage of people who know how to succeed through reporting. And the problem is amplified because that shortage is omnipresent with customers. Very few know *what* to measure and *why* before *how* is even a problem.

If you take anything from this email: What & Why come before How. Accordingly, the index of technical resources will come after the mindset ones. Probably not best to ingest this all at once. But keep coming back to it and exploring further. If you want to TL/DR just to tech links, zoom right to the bottom.

Mindset: The Four Whys of PA

I explain these in depth on video. Check here and run until 16:24 (15 minutes). It will cover three scenarios that illustrate presence & absence of these 4 Whys.
* Measure performance over time.
* Drive immediate & continuous improvement
* Align & pivot with business goals
* Drive towards targets and away from thresholds.
Watch that section of the linked video. These aren't just flippant business-speak. Not understanding them exposes you to failure risk. Humans don't apply process naturally. Naturally, we are chaotic and operate at the scale of 1 individual. Process scales our efforts, and provides result uniformity, but *ONLY* at the expense of energy. "I will follow this process because the outputs of hte process are more uniform around speed, quality, variance, security, quality, etc, etc". Understanding that is the key to applying the Four Whys in context. Ask your process owners why the process exists, or what outcomes its trying to make predictable. If you can get good answers, you've just solved the most challenging part of PA success.

Mindset: Persona Awareness

I did a video on reporting personas here (5 minutes). So this section is just a review

OPERATORS are those doing the work.

• The need to know what to work on and what to do next.
• They don't need to do analysis.
• Get out of their way. Build shrewd count-based dashboards and list views.
• As you mature, use PA SPOTLIGHT to ensure their "what comes next" is optimized. ANALYSTS are those determining "the story".
• They look for trends to exploit / respond to
• They look for exceptions to reconcile and investigate
• They gather / present data from which to make decisions
• Without the 4 Whys & knowing the outputs of their process, analysts will be lost. Get ready for 5 different flavors of "by priority / by category" on one dashboard that everyone looks at but nobody "uses". STAKEHOLDERS are those receiving "the story" and making decisions
• They typically receive powerpoint, excel, or pdf versions of reports.
• They are also often presented with *analysts* dashboards. "Here's 65 different things, you figure it out"
• Due to license and interface quirks, they are the hardest to distribute to. Getting STAKEHOLDERS happy is the hardest thing I ever found about Performance Analytics, which is why I joined VividCharts. VividCharts gives me the calculation building, aesthetic control, presentation interfaces, and distribution so my data doesn't have to leave platform. Its the presentation and automation layer that fits over ServiceNow and PA to give you results like this....

I invite you to certify and trial VividCharts

If you've ever looked at a report and wondered "what on earth does this mean", you're absolutely right. Just look below and tell me which one is easier to make sense of.

Look at the bottom chart in the above illustration. You can see there are both targets and thresholds. USE THEM. Everyone is so worried that they'll set an unrealistic standard. I'm here to tell you it does not matter. Thresholds and Goals aren't permanent! Either drive better performance or get better goals! An AWESOME side effect of goals/thresholds is that ServiceNow can then gauge improvement, and intensity of improvement, which is a godsend if you run multiple indicators against multiple processes.

Practice: Understanding Your Measure

This should go without saying, but its shocking how little its actually done. For a video explanation of this section watch here until 38 minute mark. It outlines how skipping this step opens you to failure. Only build when you are clear on...;
* Unit - be precise about unit of measure: #, $, %, time, etc.
* Direction - "Up isn't always good". Maximize things that are good. Minimize things that are bad.
* Clarity - never confuse measures with ways of breakdown measures. "Volume of ticktes" is a measure. "Volume of tickets by priority" is a measure with a breakdown. NEVER BUILD AN INDICATOR LIKE THIS!.
One of the worst ideas in PA is that you need to track everything with the same intensity. But that's not the way the world works. In Q1 your customer may be worried about speed of your response. In Q2, they might be worried about the speed of close. Q3? Quality of results. Additionally, sometimes you strive for "good enough". If we can improve enough to reach our target, we can start improvement efforts on a whole other indicator. By doing all the previous groundwork, you set yourself up for these easy shifts in focus.

RESOURCES: PA & Reporting Community Section

I try to read the front page of the PA / Reporting / Intelligence community twice weekly. LOTS of great questions and answers from ServiceNow's best and brightest.

Laugh all you like, but Groundshark is what's allowed me to crank out this mega thread in less than 1 hour. 30 episodes at 30-60 minutes each will give you more technical challenges and solutions than anyone deserves to have for free. If you don't watch this, you're not serious about your PA technical chops. Since PA is about showing data over time, the hardest thing about building your PA skill is having demo data good enough to be meaningful. Its SO FRUSTRATING.

But StageHand is an app available on Share that can help you "stage" your demo data so experimenting with PA is a lot easier. In order of how I'd use them.

Dan Grady's "ABC of PA" Community thread

Learning Path

Adam Stouts Community "Getting Started with PA" MegaThread

Docs: How Data Collection Works

Docs: PA Properties

Docs: Using the Admin Console

Docs: Using Spotlight

Docs: Scripting in PA

Adam Stout's "Using Time Series" Community thread

Adam Stout's "Doing More with Formula Indicators" Community Thread

Adam Stout's "Make Better Looking Dashboards" Community thread

Adam Stout's "Advanced Query Techniques" Communty Thread

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I remain yours truly, Robert "The Duke" Fedoruk