A KPI is a Key Performance Indicator, it is a measure of some aspect of someone's performance.

A typical example is that a sales manager wants her staff to get more sales. So she says

any junior sales people[1] who get 10[2] sales[3] this month[4] gets a free lunch[5]

Thats obviously a very simple example, but it highlights the main components of a KPI:

• [1] - the group identifying valid participants
• [2] - the level that must be reached
• [3] - what is being measured, in this case sales, and how it is assessed, in this case it is the number of sales (ie not the sum of sales amounts)
• [4] - the period over which participants will be assessed
• [5] - the reward obtained for reaching the given level

In real life KPI's are more complex. They will often have multiple levels, and the reward is often calculated from the assessment, and how the assessment is derived from the base data is often complex. So lets explore those concepts in more detail

Observations and Measurements

The observations are the raw data from which an assessment result is calculated. These are stored in Kademi as Data Series, where a data series is a series of time stamped numeric amounts which may have additional fields. Here are some examples of data series

Example 1: Customer service surveys