As with everything in the modern world, new alternatives to KPI’s are constantly being created. Fundamentally there is nothing wrong with this, and alternatives are neither good nor bad. They should be considered in the same way as more traditional KPI’s. Taking time to consider their impact is sensible and understand their strengths and weaknesses as you start to implement them.
This video looked at two alternatives to KPI’s CEM (Customer Experience Metrics) and OKR’s (Objective and Key Results). These are two of many examples. Experience Metrics are focused more on the results as a customer experiences them, we see them in Airports when you go through customs, and they offer your a “Rate your experience” machine with 3 or 5 buttons. Do you dare press the “I hated it” button? They are by nature subjective, and so while they can be easy to report upon and seem to give a direct connection to your customer base, you have to think when implementing them to understand how best to interpret the results. OKR’s are a must if you are switching to DevOps. They are a dynamic structure to enable KPI like metrics to be built and rolled into and out of reporting packs in a relatively quick timescale. As you define your metrics, you consider the from and to criteria for them; these may be time or technology bound.