Measuring What Matters: How the Navy Aligns Metrics with Mission Success

In today’s modern enterprise—across both the private sector and government—there is near-universal agreement: data is king.

Thanks to advances in data storage and processing power along with the expanding use of Artificial Intelligence (AI), we can collect and analyze more data than ever before. However, these same factors have led to increases in inefficiency in how many organizations collect and analyze their data. 

The challenge of data overload 

There is a current trend to just collect as much data as possible, throw it together into a data lake/ocean and then hope that the data scientists can make sense out of it later. This has enabled a myopic approach to analyzing the data based on what is immediately visible and based on the biases of the data scientists’ experience and organizational focus. While this method may generate eye-catching graphs and stimulate useful conversations, it begs the question: Is the analysis really relevant to the mission at hand? 

To avoid swimming in an ocean of data and getting lost at sea, organizations need to change how they approach data collection, analysis, and reporting. It starts with defining critical mission outcomes and determining the metrics that provide meaningful insights into those mission priorities. By aligning with the mission, organizations can focus on measuring what matters while filtering out the noise of interesting but ultimately less useful data. 

The Navy’s blueprint for mission-driven metrics 

An excellent example of this approach can be found in the World Class Alignment Metrics (WAMS) program developed by the U.S. Navy PEO Digital Team. By adopting WAMS, the Navy is now focused only on metrics which provide actionable insights into the five mission outcomes they have defined as being the most effective drivers of continuous improvement. Any metric that is proposed to measure is evaluated to ensure that it aligns with one or more of the mission outcomes. If a valid alignment can’t be determined, the metric is not measured. 

The five mission outcomes from WAMS are: 

• User Time Lost 
• Operational Resiliency 
• Adaptability/Mobility 
• Customer Satisfaction 
• Cost per User 

By focusing only on those metrics which roll up to these mission outcomes, the PEO Digital team has been able to affect real change for the sailors and civilians they support. For example, they have reduced average boot time on end-user devices from over 13 minutes to less than 2 minutes—significantly reducing customer frustration and increasing productivity. A critical tool in this process is Riverbed Aternity, which helps capture and analyze the relevant data. 

One of the most impressive things about the Navy WAMS program is the strategic way they developed it. Rather than operating in a vacuum, the team worked with one of the nation’s top IT consulting firms and then identified five organizations that were achieving “world-class” IT performance improvements and digital transformation: Walmart, JP Morgan Chase, Microsoft, FedEx and the US Air Force. They then applied a number of lessons they learned from these other organizations when developing the methodology for WAMS. 

The Navy’s methodology employs a disciplined and consistent approach to performance measurement:  

1. Determine a baseline for each key metric. 
2. Define expected (or target) performance levels. 
3. Measure actual performance. 
4. Compare results to external benchmarks.  

Progress is reviewed quarterly, with metrics and methods revisited twice a year to ensure continuous improvement. 

Align data with mission success 

By using this approach, with high quality performance measurement tools, virtually any organization can achieve significant improvements in their operational results and mission success. 

To learn more about how we can help you achieve similar alignment between your data and your mission, visit Riverbed or reach out to your Riverbed Account Team to start a conversation.