ER: thirty years on
ER, the U.S. medical series, is thirty years old. It’s fascinating to watch (and remember) a world without the Internet and mobile phones.
In one episode, they get an Internet-connected computer to manage patient records and end up using it to play games.
So much of the plot only works because people can’t message each other on WhatsApp or Google something they want to know, or refer a patient to another department without having to phone them.
Seven product key performance indicators
- Strategic performance – how is the product contributing to strategic business priorities, e.g., revenue?
- Customer satisfaction – how are customers rating and reviewing the product? Do they raising issues and providing feedback?
- Pipeline health – how many users are they at each stage of the product? What’s the conversion rate?
- Team health – how happy are the team? Do they have the right roles and skills? Are they communicating and creating shared understanding?
- System health – how many issues are there? How critical are they? How many customers do they affect?
- Financial status – how much does it cost to run the product? How much revenue does it generate? Is the ROI positive?
- Progress – how quickly is work progressing? How often does work ship?
The goal is to be able to draw causal connections between changes. For example, does an increase in spending, e.g., on advertising, lead to an increase in the pipeline? Or does a reduction in the speed of development progress lead to reduced customer satisfaction?