Newbie Question: How Many Measures?
04/04/08 11:19 AM

Hi,

New to this process and the Balanced Scorecard. I've seen conflicting guidance on how many measures should be on a BSC. What have people found to be the best number?

Tim

RE: Newbie Question: How Many Measures?
04/04/08 11:27 AM

Tim,

Over in the wiki, they suggest 15-20 measures:

http://bscwiki.com/wiki/index.cfm?event=Main&path=Measure

I've found this to be a pretty good benchmark.

Jim

RE: Newbie Question: How Many Measures?
04/24/08 1:28 PM

I've always tried to use between 15-20 measures, but it's never really worked for me. Scorecards that I've built always end up with 30-40 measures, since people never want to give up the measures they've been using for years for new ones. Over time, some of these do fall off the scorecard, but not enough. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to reduce the number of "legacy measures?" -- Tina

RE: Newbie Question: How Many Measures?
04/24/08 2:47 PM

We got our measures down to a reasonable number by really making people responsible for reporting on them. We realized that we could get by with 15-17 measures and still have good stratgy discussions.

RE: Newbie Question: How Many Measures?
04/24/08 2:52 PM

How do you determine the measures? I mean I know how to choose measures, but how many per objective, and which ones need more or less measures? Do some objectives get 2-3 measures and others only get one? Which ones.

RE: Newbie Question: How Many Measures?
08/11/08 7:23 AM

I don't think there are any hard and fast rules about which objectives get more than one measure. I do recall seeing an article one time about "how balanced is your scorecard", and the authors (Norton/Kaplan I believe) spoke about the balance across perspectives. They said that depending on your strategy, you may have more objectives/measures in one perspective or another. For example, if you are a holding company, you may have more financial objectives, since your process objectives would be down in your business units.