Benchmarking performance across organisations

A problem we were facing recently was that our teams perceived their own progress as not being fast enough and were developing a sense that they were not performing well.

Sometimes it is useful to know how productive we are as an organisation and how our teams compare to teams in other companies. Are we world-class? Or do we still have a way to go until we're as good as the companies we admire? How are we doing compared to our competitors? And who can we learn from?

There is no easy and accurate way to benchmark organisations against each other, but with a bit of imagination and some assumptions we can come pretty close.

This is where iTunes comes in: all Apps have similar technology stacks and release information is publicly available.

iTunes Release Comparison

Below is a comparison of app releases by 10 companies from New Zealand and across the world, including Spotify, Vimeo, Trade Me, Amazon, Ebay, Xero, Kiwibank, Uber and AirNZ. We mapped every iTunes release for each of the apps between May 2014 and June 2015.

(Click the image to enlarge or download the pdf)

We know this isn't the full picture, nor is it an exact science, but it gives a visible and relevant comparison that served our purpose.

What could possibly go wrong?

We didn't know how we were going to compare and were a bit nervous about what we'd find. We spent some time making sure we'd go into this benchmarking exercise with our eyes wide open and ready to deal with any hard facts we might discover.

How did we use this?

We printed out the release chart and stuck it on the wall with a clear prompt for people to stop and think about what it meant. We left sharpies and sticky notes alongside and waited to see what they said.

Overwhelmingly their responses were pleased and surprised that they were actually only slightly behind Spotify and Vimeo but way ahead of many of the other organisations in terms of release content and frequency.

Result

We've dispelled the myth that we're not doing well, and brought back a sense of pride and achievement to the teams. This is a much better basis from which to improve!