Indexing — Simplifying Metrics and Enabling Goal Driven Approaches

6 min readJun 11, 2023

In the modern world, we are inundated with metrics and KPIs all over the place. These simple numbers are designed to help us understand various aspects of our Product to help guide us on how well we are doing and to help identify any gaps in the product offering or any other aspect of our portfolio. Unfortunately, you have to be a scientist to understand a majority of these values and most of the time, our stakeholders are not in common contact with these. Leading to having to elaborate what we are seeing and what it means.

“Isn’t our role also there to help simplify these complex perspectives?”

I think of it a little like when we take our own temperatures, we know roughly what the general number is for being healthy and anything which is + or — this number is a trigger for acting. Wouldn’t be great if we could simplify the complex world of Product Management into such a thermometer to enable everyone to be able to see if something is good or requires improvement? This is where the Index comes in, a simple way to be able to translate the complex world of KPIs and Metrics into a human readable form that doesn’t require a degree to be able to understand if something is working or not.

Indexing is a very lightweight and easy approach to combine a number of different metrics and KPIs to make them more human readable and see within a short glance if something is improving or not. The simple process is to turn the numbers into a simple 0–100 scale with 0 being on the negative spectrum and 100 being on the positive spectrum.

For Example with the knowledge of 0 is Negative and 100 is positive, which of these numbers is a positive indicator?

See how easy is is to do this? Now the hard part is to actually create the index. The easiest approach is to set the 100 value as the aspiration / goal. The aspiration might be to keep the status quo and you want to check to see if we are deviating from such an approach, or it can be utilised to set a goal of this is where we need to reach and to see how far away from that we are.

The other cool approach is that if you create several different Indexes, you are able to combine them to a general overall scoring to gain a more holistic approach and viewpoint.

Building an Index

So you want to build an index . . . Pick below in which direction you are wanting to head in. Remember the focus is 0 is on the negative side and 100 is on the positive side.

For the examples below, let’s use individual customer net revenue as a benchmark, where we want to compare the whole pool of customers with one another.

Status Quo

When looking at comparing the current customer base with each other, which we will call the status quo, let’s take the best performing customer on a NetRevenue basis and their NetRev is the 100% marker. We then can compare every other customer to this by doing a simple Formula like:

#1 Customer NetRev — 4567 EUR (100) Random Customer NetRev — 1390 EUR

To work out where the Random Customer is on the index we simply do:

1390 / 4567 x 100 = 30 Value to Index / Status Quo 100 Value x 100 = Index Value

So on the Status Quo Index, the customer is 30/100

It is that simple and can be applied to a wide array of metrics and KPIs and makes them more human readable.

Aspiration / Goal

Let’s take the same example of Customer NetRev, instead of taking the #1 customer as the benchmark, we want to set an aspiration to reach and we can see how we are progressing towards that. With this rating. It’s best to check-in on a regular basis to see if you are getting better or worse at reaching your aspiration.

Aspiration NetRevenue is 6000 EUR per customer (100) Where does our #1 Customer fit on this index?

#1 Customer NetRev — 4567 EUR 4567 / 6000 x 100 = 76 Value to Index / Status Quo 100 Value x 100 = Index Value

So we are on a very positive path towards the aspiration, with the #1 customer scoring a 76 on the index!! It is that simple and can be applied to a wide array of metrics and KPIs and makes them more human readable.

Combining Indexes

Now you have created a number of indexes, but it can be generally confusing to view all of them at first glance, the best thing to do is to zoom out to a higher flight level to first see how are you globally looking. This is a very easy process which we will use the above “Status Quo” and “Aspiration” examples for this exercise.

Status Quo is 30/100 Aspiration is 76/100

First, add the Resulting Value together and the 100s together. This will look something like:

106/200

Second, divide the left value by the number of indexes you have combined and then do the same for the right value. In this case we have 2 indexes we are combining so it would look something like:

53/100

Taadaa! You have one your first combined index! This is a great approach when you want to get an overall look at how the team or topic is doing from a higher flight level. You can also use this indicator to benchmark and compare on a monthly or quarterly basis how things are progressing and then drill into the individual indexes when needing to figure out which area is requiring more growth or love

Different Data Sources

The approach is so versatile, you can utilise a wide array of existing KPIs and Metrics to form your indexes. One approach I really enjoy is using a simple survey with questions where the participants have to rate their feeling and thoughts on a scale 1 to 10, you can apply this to the 0–100 index and helps to turn soft KPIs (feelings and emotions) into measurable metrics. This is for example a great way you can build a “Team Health Index” you can read more on how I do this here https://medium.com/modern-recipes/team-health-index-396a8143e658 .

Utilising Asana

Because the indexes are using a similar 0–100 as say percentages are. You can utilise the “Goals” feature in Asana to keep an eye and to also communicate the results to a much wider audience.

https://asana.com/guide/help/premium/goals

Closing Thoughts

Indexing is a simple way to translate complex KPIs and metrics into a human-readable form that doesn’t require a degree to understand. The process involves turning numbers into a 0–100 scale, with 0 being negative and 100 being positive. Indexes can be used to compare the current status quo or set an aspiration/goal, and multiple indexes can be combined to gain a more holistic approach. The approach is versatile and can be applied to a wide array of metrics and KPIs, including soft KPIs like feelings and emotions.