Metrics at Work

Metrics at Work
Author: Angèle Christin
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 268
Release: 2020-06-30
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0691200009

The starkly different ways that American and French online news companies respond to audience analytics and what this means for the future of news When the news moved online, journalists suddenly learned what their audiences actually liked, through algorithmic technologies that scrutinize web traffic and activity. Has this advent of audience metrics changed journalists’ work practices and professional identities? In Metrics at Work, Angèle Christin documents the ways that journalists grapple with audience data in the form of clicks, and analyzes how new forms of clickbait journalism travel across national borders. Drawing on four years of fieldwork in web newsrooms in the United States and France, including more than one hundred interviews with journalists, Christin reveals many similarities among the media groups examined—their editorial goals, technological tools, and even office furniture. Yet she uncovers crucial and paradoxical differences in how American and French journalists understand audience analytics and how these affect the news produced in each country. American journalists routinely disregard traffic numbers and primarily rely on the opinion of their peers to define journalistic quality. Meanwhile, French journalists fixate on internet traffic and view these numbers as a sign of their resonance in the public sphere. Christin offers cultural and historical explanations for these disparities, arguing that distinct journalistic traditions structure how journalists make sense of digital measurements in the two countries. Contrary to the popular belief that analytics and algorithms are globally homogenizing forces, Metrics at Work shows that computational technologies can have surprisingly divergent ramifications for work and organizations worldwide.

The Tyranny of Metrics

The Tyranny of Metrics
Author: Jerry Z. Muller
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 245
Release: 2019-04-30
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0691191263

How the obsession with quantifying human performance threatens business, medicine, education, government—and the quality of our lives Today, organizations of all kinds are ruled by the belief that the path to success is quantifying human performance, publicizing the results, and dividing up the rewards based on the numbers. But in our zeal to instill the evaluation process with scientific rigor, we've gone from measuring performance to fixating on measuring itself—and this tyranny of metrics now threatens the quality of our organizations and lives. In this brief, accessible, and powerful book, Jerry Muller uncovers the damage metrics are causing and shows how we can begin to fix the problem. Filled with examples from business, medicine, education, government, and other fields, the book explains why paying for measured performance doesn't work, why surgical scorecards may increase deaths, and much more. But Muller also shows that, when used as a complement to judgment based on personal experience, metrics can be beneficial, and he includes an invaluable checklist of when and how to use them. The result is an essential corrective to a harmful trend that increasingly affects us all.

Metrics

Metrics
Author: Martin Klubeck
Publisher: Apress
Total Pages: 355
Release: 2012-01-13
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1430237279

Metrics are a hot topic. Executive leadership, boards of directors, management, and customers are all asking for data-based decisions. As a result, many managers, professionals, and change agents are asked to develop metrics, but have no clear idea of how to produce meaningful ones. Wouldn’t it be great to have a simple explanation of how to collect, analyze, report, and use measurements to improve your organization? Metrics: How to Improve Key Business Results provides that explanation and the tools you'll need to make your organization more effective. Not only does the book explain the “why” of metrics, but it walks you through a step-by-step process for creating a report card that provides a clear picture of organizational health and how well you satisfy customer needs. Metrics will help you to measure the right things, the right way—the first time. No wasted effort, no chasing data. The report card provides a simple tool for viewing the health of your organization, from the outside in. You will learn how to measure the key components of the report card and thereby improve real measures of business success, like repeat customers, customer loyalty, and word-of-mouth advertising. This book: Provides a step-by-step guide for building an organizational effectiveness report card Takes you from identifying key services and products and using metrics, to determining business strategy Provides examples of how to identify, collect, analyze, and report metrics that will be immediately useful for improving all aspects of the enterprise, including IT

All the News That’s Fit to Click

All the News That’s Fit to Click
Author: Caitlin Petre
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 280
Release: 2024-02-27
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 0691254931

"Over the past fifteen years, journalism has experienced a rapid proliferation of data about online reader behavior in the form of web metrics. These newsroom metrics influence which stories are written, how news is promoted, and which journalists get hired and fired. Some argue that metrics help journalists better serve their audiences. Others worry that metrics are the contemporary equivalent of a stopwatch-wielding factory manager. In Desperate Measures, Caitlin Petre offers a rare behind-the-scenes look at how metrics are reshaping the work of journalism. Over a period of four years, Petre conducted a mix of in-depth interviews and ethnographic observation at three sites. The book first shows how metrics tools are designed and marketed, via Petre's research at the prominent news analytics company Chartbeat. Petre then follows Chartbeat's tool into the newsrooms of two of the company's highest-profile clients: Gawker Media and The New York Times. She finds that newsroom metrics are a powerful form of managerial surveillance and discipline. However, unlike the manager's stopwatch that preceded them, digital metrics are designed to gain the trust of wary journalists by providing a habit-forming user experience that mimics key features of addictive games. She details how the ambiguous nature of the data lead journalists to draw seemingly arbitrary boundaries around uses of audience metrics that are either legitimate or illegitimate. And she examines how metrics intersect with existing newsroom hierarchies. As performance analytics spread to virtually every professional field, Petre's findings speak to the future of expertise and labor relations in contexts far beyond journalism"--

Working Backwards

Working Backwards
Author: Colin Bryar
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2021-02-09
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1250267609

Working Backwards is an insider's breakdown of Amazon's approach to culture, leadership, and best practices from two long-time Amazon executives—with lessons and techniques you can apply to your own company, and career, right now. In Working Backwards, two long-serving Amazon executives reveal the principles and practices that have driven the success of one of the most extraordinary companies the world has ever known. With twenty-seven years of Amazon experience between them—much of it during the period of unmatched innovation that created products and services including Kindle, Amazon Prime, Amazon Studios, and Amazon Web Services—Bryar and Carr offer unprecedented access to the Amazon way as it was developed and proven to be repeatable, scalable, and adaptable. With keen analysis and practical steps for applying it at your own company—no matter the size—the authors illuminate how Amazon’s fourteen leadership principles inform decision-making at all levels of the company. With a focus on customer obsession, long-term thinking, eagerness to invent, and operational excellence, Amazon’s ground-level practices ensure these characteristics are translated into action and flow through all aspects of the business. Working Backwards is both a practical guidebook and the story of how the company grew to become so successful. It is filled with the authors’ in-the-room recollections of what “Being Amazonian” is like and how their time at the company affected their personal and professional lives. They demonstrate that success on Amazon’s scale is not achieved by the genius of any single leader, but rather through commitment to and execution of a set of well-defined, rigorously-executed principles and practices—shared here for the very first time. Whatever your talent, career or organization might be, find out how you can put Working Backwards to work for you.

The Definitive Guide to IT Service Metrics

The Definitive Guide to IT Service Metrics
Author: Kurt McWhirter
Publisher: IT Governance Publishing
Total Pages: 311
Release: 2012-08-30
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1849284067

Learn how to integrate IT service metrics into your business and maximize their usage and effectiveness.

Security Metrics

Security Metrics
Author: Andrew Jaquith
Publisher: Pearson Education
Total Pages: 356
Release: 2007-03-26
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 0132715775

The Definitive Guide to Quantifying, Classifying, and Measuring Enterprise IT Security Operations Security Metrics is the first comprehensive best-practice guide to defining, creating, and utilizing security metrics in the enterprise. Using sample charts, graphics, case studies, and war stories, Yankee Group Security Expert Andrew Jaquith demonstrates exactly how to establish effective metrics based on your organization’s unique requirements. You’ll discover how to quantify hard-to-measure security activities, compile and analyze all relevant data, identify strengths and weaknesses, set cost-effective priorities for improvement, and craft compelling messages for senior management. Security Metrics successfully bridges management’s quantitative viewpoint with the nuts-and-bolts approach typically taken by security professionals. It brings together expert solutions drawn from Jaquith’s extensive consulting work in the software, aerospace, and financial services industries, including new metrics presented nowhere else. You’ll learn how to: • Replace nonstop crisis response with a systematic approach to security improvement • Understand the differences between “good” and “bad” metrics • Measure coverage and control, vulnerability management, password quality, patch latency, benchmark scoring, and business-adjusted risk • Quantify the effectiveness of security acquisition, implementation, and other program activities • Organize, aggregate, and analyze your data to bring out key insights • Use visualization to understand and communicate security issues more clearly • Capture valuable data from firewalls and antivirus logs, third-party auditor reports, and other resources • Implement balanced scorecards that present compact, holistic views of organizational security effectiveness

Social Media Metrics

Social Media Metrics
Author: Jim Sterne
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 265
Release: 2010-03-18
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 047062258X

The only guide devoted exclusively to social media metrics Whether you are selling online, through a direct sales force, or via distribution channels, what customers are saying about you online is now more important than your advertising. Social media is no longer a curiosity on the horizon but a significant part of your marketing mix. While other books explain why social media is critical and how to go about participating, Social Media Metrics focuses on measuring the success of your social media marketing efforts. Success metrics in business are based on business goals where fame does not always equate to fortune. Read this book to determine: Why striving for more Twitter followers or Facebook friends than the competition is a failing strategy How to leverage the time and effort you invest in social media How to convince those who are afraid of new things that social media is a valuable business tool and not just a toy for the overly-wired Knowing what works and what doesn't is terrific, but only in a constant and unchanging world. Social Media Metrics is loaded with specific examples of specific metrics you can use to guide your social media marketing efforts as new means of communication.

Gaming the Metrics

Gaming the Metrics
Author: Mario Biagioli
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 307
Release: 2020-01-28
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0262356570

How the increasing reliance on metrics to evaluate scholarly publications has produced new forms of academic fraud and misconduct. The traditional academic imperative to “publish or perish” is increasingly coupled with the newer necessity of “impact or perish”—the requirement that a publication have “impact,” as measured by a variety of metrics, including citations, views, and downloads. Gaming the Metrics examines how the increasing reliance on metrics to evaluate scholarly publications has produced radically new forms of academic fraud and misconduct. The contributors show that the metrics-based “audit culture” has changed the ecology of research, fostering the gaming and manipulation of quantitative indicators, which lead to the invention of such novel forms of misconduct as citation rings and variously rigged peer reviews. The chapters, written by both scholars and those in the trenches of academic publication, provide a map of academic fraud and misconduct today. They consider such topics as the shortcomings of metrics, the gaming of impact factors, the emergence of so-called predatory journals, the “salami slicing” of scientific findings, the rigging of global university rankings, and the creation of new watchdogs and forensic practices.