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Step 3: Create Key Metrics and Glossary Terms

  • Create the key metrics used in each domain or team in scope
  • Create a glossary with the key business concepts used in each domain or team in scope
Metrics and glossary creation
Scope Building

This step will also build the scope for documentation or knowledge generation.

Metrics Documentation​

A metric or Key Performance Indicator (KPI) is a quantifiable measurement used to evaluate the performance or success of an organization, process, team, or individual.

Recommendation

Putting metrics under a domain or a team bears the risk of adding multiple definitions for the same business concept. For that reason we recommend having a separate section for metrics that is either flat or is only grouped by the type of metric (and not by domain, team, etc.).

For example you can group MAU, WAU, Number of events, etc. under Adoption. But we do not recommend grouping them under Product, for example, as other departments or teams might play a part in influencing them.

When documenting you should consider what questions you want the documentation to answer. Some question examples can be found below:

  • Why was the metric created? Describe the purpose of the metric
  • Who should use it? Target audience
  • What does it measure? Describe where it is commonly used
  • How and when? How is it calculated, when and how often is it refreshed
  • Anything special we should know? For example, always uses a specific filter

Metrics and KPIs will be present in one or more dashboards, data sets or semantic models, and fields, and can be sourced from one or two tables and columns. We recommend using Pinned Assets in order to highlight these relationships.

Best Practices
  • Each metric should have at least one owner and corresponding domain or team tags.
  • Each metric should have at least one pinned asset to either a dashboard or source table used in the calculation for the metric.

Glossary Documentation​

Under glossary (or business concepts) you can add any of those business terms that do not fit under the metric umbrella.

Some examples could be:

  • Acronyms: for example, GDPR, QBR, etc.
  • Business groupings: for example, territory, EMEA, APAC, etc.
  • Business terms: for example, active employee, commercial or enterprise account, customer, etc.

The documentation of these terms should include a business definition, a technical one, and possibly the source of the data.