Ideas/resources/thoughts on evaluations and metrics?

[Amy Dohlman <amdohlman -at- uwalumni -dot- com>]

Hey all,

My team is starting to attack the idea of metrics: how to measure our  
customers' satisfaction with the documentation we produce and with the  
process we use to produce it. (If you're familiar with the training  
world, what we're trying to measure would be analogous to the level 1,  
2, and 3 evaluations that training seeks to collect.)

We've come up with some ideas on how to capture this sort of  
information: "rate this article" sorts of brief surveys for documents  
in our repository, surveys for our customers at the completion of  
projects, comparing productivity and error measurements before and  
after documentation to judge effectiveness, setting up guidelines or  
grids that help determine what sorts of evaluations to do for which  
types of projects, those sorts of things.

We're in the information gathering stage, so I'd like to hear about  
any of your experiences with these sorts of metrics - do you have any  
advice for us? Any best practices? Any resources or websites I should  
look to for more information? Ideas on how to go about gathering this  
sort of information, or what to avoid? We're aware that surveys have  
low response rates, and that correlation is not causation, and of  
those sort of related pitfalls, but any information that you could  
share about how you implemented (or didn't) your evaluation methods  
would be very helpful.

I work for a large insurance company, and my customers are other  
internal business areas and teams, but I'm interested in all  
evaluation implementation battle stories, both internal and external.

Thanks so much in advance.
Amy Dohlman

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