5 metrics every software CEO should obsess over. Editor’s note: Clate Mask is co-author of the New York Times bestseller Conquer the Chaos and CEO of Infusionsoft,. He submitted this column to VentureBeat.) There’s an old business maxim that goes “Where performance is measured, performance improves. Where performance is measured and reported, performance improves dramatically.” And pretty much every manager has observed the truth in it.Humans, though, can only focus on so many things at once. When you’re running a software company, there are seemingly hundreds of things to measure. Here are five important metrics I believe every software CEO should focus on, regardless of their business stage.
Cost per acquisition - CPA is measured in various ways, but the best way is to roll up all sales and marketing costs for the month and divide by the number of customers acquired that month. Revenue per employee – Early-stage companies typically have very low revenue/employee. Usage. Therefore a CEO needs to know how to measure and drive usage. Online project management software, workforce management planning tools. Gantt Chart (Microsoft Project-like) using Widget. Google Spreadsheets is a powerful web application to do everything you do using Excel. A nice way to use it is to manage a project plan with a gantt chart (microsoft project-like) and share it on-line with your team.This is a free and versatile solution to do that. This tutorial illustrates how to use Google Spreadsheets Viewpath Gadget to implement it.
Take a look at this spreadsheet Step 1: Project Plan structureFirst step is defiing your project plan structure. I suggest you to use this basic structure: Column A: Task ID (WBS) (an unique ID which identifyes each task with a progressive number).Column B: Task description (a short description of the activity).Column C: Percentage of completion (0%-100%).Column D: Predecessor (finish-start relationships between tasks).Column E: Start date (task start date).Column F: Finis date (task finish date).
The result is something like this: Step 2: Add Gantt GadgetClick on Chart icon and select Gadget option. 6 Things You Need for Your Web Project to Succeed. 6 Things You Need for Your Web Project to Succeed Being at an age where I’m just beginning to carve my path in the real world, I tend to have many peers and co-workers who constantly think about making an income besides sitting in front of the computer eight to ten hours a day in a windowless room. by Andrea Mercado I’ve had thousands of conversations about initiating startup companies, selling IT products or services online, creating profit-generating web applications (like a derivative facebook site), and putting up blogs.
Eventually, I began to see characteristics that I feel are needed in order for your own project to succeed, and I present them here. Don’t be afraid to commit. If you’re comfortable with your current salary and you need the promise of eating at least one meal a day (sans ramen noodles), why change it? Before doing anything, set your goals and develop your idea in a presentable way. How do you describe your project in two to three sentences?
Avoid going solo. Related links: Teambox | Project management and collaboration software. The Agency Problem. The agency problem is the problem of doing one-off work in a world in which software is becoming a service that needs constant attention. For many people in the web design industry, design projects have a specific start and end date. The end date specifies when the design (the mockups, code, or custom CMS) will be delivered. After the end date, the engagement is over and both parties move on. This way of working grew out of the print industry and as creative folks migrated over to doing more business on the Web they’ve brought this methodology with them. And it makes sense for print…once the print version is printed there isn’t much left to do except work on something else.
Increasingly, though, social software is showing just how detrimental this sort of engagement is for web design. No design survives contact with the user. So, what can we do about the agency problem? Well, for one, I think that we’ll see an increasing number of design projects have open-ends to them.