Optimization and metrics

How will you know if your research repository is working and whether it is fulfilling its purpose?

Assessing the impact of research work and insights can be difficult, but if your goal is to understand whether or not centralizing your research data is helping the organization to make better decisions, you can define an initial set of metrics around internal engagement.

Here are a few examples for inspiration:

Number of shares by team members: If team members share information from the repository, they most likely found something of value. You could identify users sharing data and ask what triggered the share and how it helped them.

The number of contributions by team members: Users outside the research team who add data, research, or any other artifact to the repository could be a sign of trust. They believe it is worth contributing to and that their contribution will be used or helpful to other team members.

Time to insights: If one of the goals of your repository is to help researchers identify insights more quickly, understanding the time it takes them to get to insights would be a good indication of success.

Think about your repository like any other product. To understand whether or not it is effective, you need to define a metric that allows you to track progress.