Defining Meaningful Measures of IT Productivity with the Balanced Scorecard

Abstract

The accurate and timely measurement of an organisation’s information technology (IT) productivity is a critical tool to control the strategic and operational aspects of any firm. This chapter describes the validation and integration of productivity measures through the application of the Balanced Scorecard. Developing measures of IT productivity that are not skewed by methodological or data collection anomalies, shifting usage of communication and work-flow channels, negated utility of knowledge management, quality versus quantity trade-offs, and differences in individual skill levels and performance is difficult yet essential. The Balanced Scorecard as a strategic measurement framework is applied to assist in determining the appropriate matching of what we intend to measure and to what we assign numerical values.