[Quoted from http://g2sf.com/white-paper/]

The starting point for meaningful metrics is to determine how the end user or customer will evaluate the service provider’s performance on each of these services. Armed with this information it is then much easier to establish a limited number of high level, yet measurable metrics that be quantified and reported.  It is then the responsibility of the IT organization to “reverse engineer” the overall customer focused metrics to determine the cascading sub tier metrics that directly contribute to the overall customer metrics used to evaluate the effectiveness of a specific IT service. These sub tier metrics represent both technology metrics that indicate the effectiveness of a specific technology as well as more service related metrics that represent the effectiveness of the combined technologies required to deliver a specific service.  When combining the customer’s evaluation (perception) of the quality of service across all IT services, the effectiveness of the IT organization overall can be determined and improvement plans established. This approach to implementing metrics ensures that the appropriate organizational behaviors are aligned with what is important to the end user or customer.

Article sourced from TEAMVIEWER.COM 

The 80-20 rule — or Pareto principle — states that 20% of your efforts make up 80% of the output.

In the late 1800s, Pareto theorized that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population after observing that 20% of the pea pods in his garden provided 80% of the peas!

How can you apply this to remote work? Well, by delegating or automating your processes you’re able hand off the 80% which takes time from your day and focus on the smaller, more specialized chunk of work that only you can do.

It’s important when working remotely to be as productive and efficient as you can because you’re at an inherent disadvantage and more prone to distraction.

By making sure that your data entry and busywork is taken care of by others or automation, you can concentrate on pure output.

A big time-saver is integrating your apps. Without integrations, you’re going to spend a ridiculous amount of time transferring data between your apps.

Check out TeamViewer’s list of integrations which include JIRA and Outlook to get an idea of what you can do when your apps speak to each other.

Even though I’m comfortable with formatting, editing and data entry, my main skill is writing. I used to spend 50% of my time on non-writing tasks, which killed my output, forced me to rush deadlines and write substandard articles.

Now, I’ve realized there are people on my team that are much better at non-writing tasks than I am, and they help me by taking work off my hands and leaving me with more time to do what I was hired for.