New Feature: Success Metrics Dashboard

As we launched the new Beta version of ITSO on Monday we also made available a handful of new features.  One of these is a feature we are calling the Success Metrics Dashboard.  

We’re particularly excited about this addition to the ITSO tool set as we feel it truly exploits the value of the ITSO project database by allowing users to see how successful their projects are likely to be based on an aggregate of other ITSO projects performed by your peers.  

To do this we take projects of the same type and size and apply some database magic along with a handful of pretty powerful algorithms to predict the possible success score of your project.  In addition to this technical wizardry we also show neat peer feedback such as: common lessons learned, product categories used in successful projects, things to consider doing differently, likelihood of achieving project objectives, and a great deal more that will to make you stop and think before kicking off your projects.  

Our goal is that this feature will save you the time, money and face that go into less than optimal project results, and we believe that giving you the ability to apply the experience of the masses, you will be on your way to optimizing your IT operations. 

The Success Metrics Dashboard is already being recieved to rave reviews in user acceptance tests and user interviews, and while we feel this feature already has a huge amount to offer, we also know we have only just scratched the surface of it’s potential.  Over the next months we will continue to improve this feature along with many others to bring you a truly exceptional experience.

ITSO Community Statistics Profile

ITSO users can now view basic ITSO community project statistics with the release of the updated ITSO Community Statistics PDF that’s available on the ITSO site as of today.

The PDF highlights the following project statistics to give you a clearer idea of what projects are being conducted by the ITSO user community:

• Project Types by Popularity
• Average Spend by Project Category
• Project Objective Categories by Popularity
• Average Project Budgets
• ITSO User Company Size Distributions
• Typical Project Initiators by Job Title

We look to build these views over time with the development of more interactive projects such as the Project Trends Dashboard and the Peer Data Dashboard.  Both of these projects will allow ITSO users to get deeper insight into the ITSO community to help plan future projects and be better informed about what your industry is doing in IT.   Watch this space for more…

View the ITSO Community Statistics PDF here.

ITSO project count update… we’re growing!

Today I’m happy to announce that we now have a total of 32,608 projects in the IT Solution Optimizer site!  As you may already be aware, it is this data that’s used to determine the budget and timeline peer comparisons and also benchmark the likelihood of success for your projects in the upcoming Success Metrics feature (more on that shortly).  The way we do this is to take all projects that are similar to the one that you are working on within ITSO and apply a set of algorithms to the data to produce these results.  Of course we never share ITSO member data with anyone as peer comparisons are used only on aggregate, ensuring your confidentiality.

The more projects in ITSO equate to more accurate results that will drive our users project success, so please remember to use the site for all of your IT projects both large and small, it is users like you that have helped build this truly unique resource for the IT community.

In addition to the features I’ve already mentioned we also use project data for other neat peer comparison features within the site and will be building on this capability over time to add more value to the ITSO community of users.  As always I will post updates to this blog to share new features that are downstream.

If you would like more information on the how we collect and use project data for your benefit, take a look at the post below labeled “Ensuing Data Excellence”.

“Ensuring Data Excellence” document now available

Because of popular demand we have published the “Ensuring Data Excellence” document for download on the new ITSO website as a PDF.  The document answers commonly asked questions such as: how do you collect peer data? and what kinds of peer data do you collect?  We also illustrate confidence intervals and discuss the validity and accuracy of the data used in bringing you the peer benchmarking features on the site.

A New Standard for Data Quality
IT Solution Optimizer™ (ITSO) raises the bar for data excellence in the market research industry. Our goal is to provide IT decision makers with peer data that is representative, accurate, and reliable. By implementing rigorous data quality standards and testing methods, we provide an unmatched database of unbiased, objective data about real world IT solutions. Our users get actionable data so they can plan with confidence.

It’s available for viewing here.