Kinds of performance describe either the things you’re trying to do well (the activities) or the thing you’re trying to make better (the subject).
You can measure “financial performance” (how well you do financial things) or “business performance” (how well your business works).
The interesting thing about subject-based performance (as opposed to activity-based performance) is that it can can basically include anything that has to do with your subject. Any action the subject performs, or anything that contributes to the quality of those actions, is fair game as a metric for the subject’s overall performance. You can correlate almost any property of a subject to its performance—which is kind of wild.
In other words, I could measure “fruit performance” if I really wanted to. What does fruit do? It’s consumed, it’s eaten, it nourishes—but it also scents and flavors, it grows, it sells. Depending on who you are (consumer, customer, or supplier) your view of “fruit performance” will be completely different—whether you care about its taste, nutrition, cost, or sales. To form a holistic measure of fruit performance, I could take key performance indicators from each of those viewpoints and group them together to create a kind of “balanced fruit scorecard”.
Subject-based performance is cross-disciplinary. It groups together other lower level activity-based kinds of performance to describe how well a thing works.
So web performance… does that include anything the Web does? Any action the Web supports?
Yep. Yes it does.
The only question then is how many metrics we’ll all share together—what common standards for web performance we’ll come up with. But how interoperable can those metrics be? What things do all websites do? And on all devices? Will we form lower level branches of web performance for specific devices and kinds of applications? Only time will tell.
In the meantime, the most interesting web performance metrics are the ones most unique, most specific to your subject—to your website. What exactly does your website do? How do you measure that?
You can measure “financial performance” (how well you do financial things) or “business performance” (how well your business works).
The interesting thing about subject-based performance (as opposed to activity-based performance) is that it can can basically include anything that has to do with your subject. Any action the subject performs, or anything that contributes to the quality of those actions, is fair game as a metric for the subject’s overall performance. You can correlate almost any property of a subject to its performance—which is kind of wild.
In other words, I could measure “fruit performance” if I really wanted to. What does fruit do? It’s consumed, it’s eaten, it nourishes—but it also scents and flavors, it grows, it sells. Depending on who you are (consumer, customer, or supplier) your view of “fruit performance” will be completely different—whether you care about its taste, nutrition, cost, or sales. To form a holistic measure of fruit performance, I could take key performance indicators from each of those viewpoints and group them together to create a kind of “balanced fruit scorecard”.
Subject-based performance is cross-disciplinary. It groups together other lower level activity-based kinds of performance to describe how well a thing works.
So web performance… does that include anything the Web does? Any action the Web supports?
Yep. Yes it does.
The only question then is how many metrics we’ll all share together—what common standards for web performance we’ll come up with. But how interoperable can those metrics be? What things do all websites do? And on all devices? Will we form lower level branches of web performance for specific devices and kinds of applications? Only time will tell.
In the meantime, the most interesting web performance metrics are the ones most unique, most specific to your subject—to your website. What exactly does your website do? How do you measure that?
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P.S. Now that I’ve written and re-read this, I’m thinking that actually “measurement-based performance” may be more accurate than “activity-based performance”. Thinking through a list of different kinds of performance (academic, athletic, economic, mechanical, physical, technical) I think those “kinds” actually describe the type of metrics more than they describe the type of activities. Financial performance focuses on financial metrics more than financial activities, right? Hm… Food for thought!