Welcome » IT Booklets » Operations » Risk Monitoring and Reporting » Performance Monitoring
Performance monitoring and management involves measuring operational activities, analyzing the resulting metrics, and comparing them to internally established standards and industry benchmarks to assess the effectiveness and efficiency of existing operations. Measurable performance factors include resource usage, operations problems, capacity, response time, and personnel activity. Management should also review metrics that assess business unit and external customer satisfaction. Diminished system or personnel performance not only affects customer satisfaction, but can also result in noncompliance with contractual SLAs that could result in monetary penalties. Refer to the IT Handbook's "Outsourcing Technology Services Booklet" for more detailed information.
If economically practicable, management should automate monitoring and reporting processes. Large mainframe systems have numerous automated tools available at the application and operating system level for generating technology and process-related metrics. Mid-range systems also typically possess native capability for capturing and reporting technology. There are also after-market reporting tools and vendor-supplied performance analysis tools available for mid-range systems. Client-server systems are not always equipped with analysis and reporting tools. Often management should decide between purchasing expensive after-market reporting tools to automate the data gathering and reporting or generating the reports manually.
Much of IT operations can and should be subject to measurement based on the size and complexity of the institution. The information gained from analysis supports not only daily management of operations and early diagnostics on impending problems, but provides the baseline and trend data used in capacity planning.
Examples of technology related metrics include:
Examples of operations performance metrics include the following: