Success Measurement #2 — Time to Innovation
To speak of cloud is to speak of innovation, which is
why every Cloud Leader thinks about innovation.
With the cloud, innovators escape the hardships of
legacy thinking and become the tip of the disruption
spear. They are set free to create.
There is one problem — how does the Cloud Leader
measure innovation? For those who live in the real
world of business, we must talk about return on
investment (ROI) and provide tangible evidence that
innovation leads to cash. We must connect the dots of
creativity with the reality of revenue and operating
profit, for without optics on this key result, our fancy
words and dream-stage realities will be sent to the IT
scrapheap.
KPIs for Speed
to Innovation
• T
he number of code releases
your team produces per time
period
• T
he amount of rapid A/B test-
ing per time period
• S
hare of voice in marketplace
related to new product
releases and updates
86 | THE DOPPLER | SPRING 2018
At the heart of innovation is your client, either your
target buyer or internal business unit. Understanding
the client’s preferences enables you, through rapid
innovation, to offer more options tailored to their
needs. Best practices suggest that high frequency
code releases facilitate A/B testing to determine cli-
ent behaviors. Rapid A/B testing, through a strong
CI/CD process, leads to code changes that drive rev-
enue and improve operational profit. Therefore, a
leading indicator of cloud program success should be
number of software code releases per time period.
Waterfall release cycles on legacy platforms are diffi-
cult to manage and lack the framework for A/B test-
ing. Your born-in-the-cloud competitors are free of
legacy platforms and processes. They build tool
chains that enable one-click code deployment, and
release hundreds of software changes in the time it
takes to roll out the next version of a legacy
platform.
Measure your code releases. It is key to innovation,
and critical to revenue and profit.