Goal of the team. Absolute value or relative Growth. Fully controlled or not. 關於團隊目標，絕對值或相對增長，團隊完全可控與否（English & Traditional Chinese)

Fully controlled or not

I recently came across the article "Goal on What Matters. Even if Its Not Fully Within the Teams Control" from the SoftwareLeadWeekly by Oren Ellenbogen.

Measuring developer productivity is difficult. (please check Measuring developer productivity? A response to McKinsey). However, I think it's critical to set a goal for a team or person so we can align the outcome and impact we want.?

The key point of the article is that we should set the goal to what matters even if it's not fully controlled by the team. If we push ourselves to set a goal that is fully controlled by the team but does not matter, it usually leads to

1. A metric that is easy to measure but cannot represent what we want
2. A result that moves the metric but doesn't have a real impact
3. An impact on a specific domain with the sacrifice on other domains.
4. A team focuses on optimizing trivial things and misses the big picture.

When I was responsible for SEO performance at Pinkoi, an e-commerce platform, I developed a similar measure like the one mentioned in the article. Measuring SEO performance is not easy. Several factors affect organic search traffic, including:

1. Seasonality: Holidays greatly influence website traffic. For example, during Lunar New Year, people search for red envelopes; during Christmas, they seek gifts for gift exchanges; and during the Mid-Autumn Festival, they look for gift boxes for customers or relatives.
2. Google search ads: Our digital marketing team frequently conducts campaigns using Google search ads that target specific keywords. As a result, what was once organic traffic for these keywords often gets converted into paid search traffic.

At that time, I wanted to ensure that the indicators of my team's goals could highly represent our work without any major deviations. Therefore, I used direct traffic as the denominator to eliminate seasonal effects. I tried to monitor those keywords that rank high in organic search and at the same time, we are also promoting through Google Search Ads. In the end, this indicator was difficult to calculate and understand. Moreover, due to many biases behind the scenes, we still couldn't fully trust these indicators. For example, if we increase retention rate, direct traffic would also increase. In addition, optimizing the ranking of a website in Google Search is a lengthy process, and the effects of this indicator are also difficult to see in the short term.

The main reason we did it that way at the time was because the team's bonus was highly tied to the achievement rate of this team goal. For a product development team, I think this is a bad practice. It leads to the team overly focusing on performance measurement rather than solving the right problems. But that's another topic beyond the scope of this article. If given another chance, I would try to make the indicators clear and easy to understand in order to directly express our desired goals. And I would attempt to make the indicators primarily serve as a focus for direction rather than being used directly for calculating bonuses and performance.

我最近讀到了來自 Oren Ellenbogen 的《SoftwareLeadWeekly》上的一篇文章，題為《Goal on What Matters. Even if Its Not Fully Within the Teams Control》。

衡量開發人員生產力並不容易（請參閱 Measuring developer productivity? A response to McKinsey）。然而，我認為為團隊或個人設定目標是至關重要的，這樣我們才能在公司上下對齊我們想要的結果和影響。

文章的重點是，我們應該將目標設定為重要的事情，即使它不完全由團隊控制。如果我們迫使自己設定一個完全由團隊控制但不重要的目標，通常會導致：

1. 一個容易衡量指標，但不能代表我們想要的事。
2. 一個數字上的成果，能改變指標但沒有真正 impact。
3. 在特定領域創造了 impact，但犧牲了其他領域。
4. 團隊專注於優化瑣碎事物，錯失大局。

當我負責 Pinkoi 的 SEO 表現時，我設計了一種類似文章中提到的指標。衡量 SEO 表現並不容易。有幾個因素會影響 organic search 流量，包括：

1. 季節性：節日對網站流量有很大影響。例如，在農曆新年期間，人們會搜尋紅包；在聖誕節期間，他們尋找交換禮物；而在中秋節期間，他們會尋找給顧客或親戚的禮盒。
2. Google 搜尋廣告：Digital marketing 團隊經常使用針對特定關鍵字的 Google 搜尋廣告進行推廣活動。因此，這些關鍵字原本的 organic search 流量往往會轉變成付費搜尋流量。

當時，我想確保我的團隊目標的指標能夠高度代表我們的工作並且沒有其他主要偏差。因此，我使用 direct traffic 作為分母來消除季節性的影響。我試著監控那些關鍵字，在 organic search 中排名靠前且同時我們也在 Google 搜索廣告下進行宣傳。最終，這個指標很難計算和理解。而且由於背後存在許多偏見，我們仍然無法完全信任這些指標。例如，如果我們提高了留存率，direct traffic 也會增加。另外，在 Google Search 中優化一個網站的排名是一個漫長的過程，這個指標短期上也很難看出效應。

我們當時這麼做的主因是團隊的 bonus 與這個團隊目標的達成率高度綁定。對於一個產品開發團隊來說，我認爲這是個 bad practice。這導致團隊過分計較成效測量，而非專注在解決對的問題。但這是超出文章範圍的另一個話題了。若從來一次，我會嘗試讓指標清晰易懂直接去表達我們要的目標。並嘗試讓指標主要作用是對焦方向而不是拿來直接計算 bonus 與 performance。

Absolute values or relative values

Another similar issue is "whether the goals we set should be absolute values or relative values". For example, "the conversion rate increased from 1% to 1.1% by the end of the year" or "the conversion rate needs to increase by +10% by the end of the year".

The former is easily influenced by other external factors, such as seasonal changes or significant increases in conversion rates due to pandemic. The latter is suitable for A/B testing to accurately attribute and measure delta % (or lift), but sometimes it may limit the team to methods that can be verified through experiments and overlook other possibilities.

My suggestion is:

1. Both absolute value and delta % should be included in the target. For example, "10% increase in conversion rate, reaching 1.1% by the end of the year from the original 1%."

2. If the return on investment is reasonable, try to attribute most of the delta % to works in or out of the team.

3. During quarterly/yearly reviews, not only look at absolute numbers but also provide evidence and attempt to explain the underlying factors behind changes in these indicators.

The reasons are:

1. Absolute value contains more comprehensive information, allowing a better understanding of business/product issues. For example, a current conversion rate of 5% or 1% can be considered different situations.

2. Encourage teams to think about various possibilities. Regardless of whether the opportunity can be verified with experiments, it can be considered within the scope of execution.

3. By observing the absolute values, the team is guided to understand the factors that go beyond their scope of work. For example, if nothing has been done but the conversion rate drops from 1% to 0.8%, what happened?

另一個類似的問題是「我們設定的目標應該是絕對值還是相對值」。例如，「年底轉化率從 1% 增加到 1.1%」或「年底時轉化率增加 +10%」。

前者很容易受到其他外部因素的影響，如季節性或因疫情而導致轉化率顯著提高。後者適合用於 A/B 測試可準確歸因與衡量 delta %（或說 lift），但有時可能限縮團隊在那些能夠用實驗驗證的方法而忽視其他的可能性。

我的建議是：

1. 目標中應該包含絕對值和增減百分比。例如，「轉化率增加 +10%，從原來的 1% 到年底達到 1.1%。」
2. 如果投資回報合理，嘗試將大部分 delta % 歸因於團隊內或"外"的工作。
3. 在季度/年度評估期間，不僅要關注絕對數字，還要提供證據並嘗試解釋這些指標變化背後的原因。

原因是：

1. 絕對值包含更全面的信息，使人們能更好地了解業務/產品問題。例如，當前轉化率為 5% 或 1% 可以被認為是不同的情況。
2. 鼓勵團隊思考各種可能性。無論機會是否可以通過實驗驗證，都可以考慮在執行範圍內。
3. 通過觀察絕對值，引導團隊了解超出他們工作範圍的影響因素。例如，如果什麼都沒做但轉化率從1%下降到0.8%，發生了什麼？