"Maintain" Measures

While we've provided you with a default 0-100 % range whenever a measure is tracked, you can customize it further to maintain your measures by keeping the values within, above or below the specified ranges. Choose Maintain between, Maintain above or Maintain below in the Target type dropdown in the Tracking section to enable this customization. You can also set critical limits which will help you with the health calculation (see What does each Health mean in Cascade?) and visualization of the progress chart.

Note that the health % gets “clamped” to be between 0 -100%. If a value is large or smaller than that, then it'll be rounded off to the closest value (i.e., if you had -20%, then it gets rounded to 0%).

In the case of maintaining a measure within a range, the critical limits (lower or upper ranges) that you set will serve as a tolerance limit, and correlate with your tracking mechanism, thereby controlling the health of your measure.

If you wish to pull insights from measures that've "maintain targets" specified, you can use "Single Measure Performance" widget or "Current State of Measure" widget in your dashboards. Also, you can create a "Measures table" or "Discover View with entity as Measures" in your report and apply filter as "Condition is maintain or Not maintain".

How does maintain measure work?

With maintain measures, you can:

1. set up a target to "achieve" (can be a range)

2. set critical limits to calculate health, and visualize the chart showing up the lower and upper limit numbers that you want to display. But this'll also serve as a tolerance limit for measures set to "maintain in between". Any progress made beyond the critical limits will straight away make the health to be At risk.

The above two options provide a higher level of granularity, and thereby determine the health calculation.

If the progress updated meets the targets set in the maintain options, and the due date is still in the future, then it would show up as On track. Any value beyond the critical limits will straight away make the health to be At risk.

The health is based on the thresholds you set and it’s a sliding scale. As you get further from the target, it'll go from On track to Behind to At risk. The further that threshold is from the main target the slower the health will go down. In other words, the Health of the measure (whether it’s On Track, Behind, or At Risk) will indicate whether you are within the range of your target you want to maintain above/below/within or not. If you are within your target range, it will be On Track, if you are close but not quite there, it will be Behind, and if you're too far from your target, it will be At Risk. 

Now, let's see how each option works.

Maintain In Between:

Use this tracking customization when you want your target to be between a range. For example, a good CSAT is any value between 90 and 100. So, when the progress is any of the numbers in this range, the measure is said to be on track till the due date. And, if you set critical limits as 75 and 100, then if your progress is between 75 to 90, or greater than 100, the health will vary to be on track, behind or at risk.

Let's consider this example:

The units produced per day should be maintained between 4000 and 4500, with the Lower critical at 1000 and Upper critical at 5000.

• If the progress made is any value between 4000 and 4500, then it would be within the range and the health will be On track.

• If the progress is outside of this range and measure's due date is still in future, then the health will vary between Behind and At risk depending on the due date.

• Past the due date, if the progress is within the 4000 and 4500, then the health would be Achieved, and with any other value outside the limit, the health will be At risk.

Maintain Above:

Use this tracking customization when you want your target to be above a certain value. For example, maintaining platform uptime availability above 75%. You can also use this customization when you want to maintain both the initial and target value at the same level, i.e., you want 100% of your employees to enable SSO, and it should always be 100%, then you can choose this option and say maintain above 100%, in which case, this'll be on track till the due date.

Let's consider this example: 

The First pass yield must always be maintained above 85%. So in this case, the Lower limit is 85% and the Lower critical is 50 and the Maximum value is 100.

• Straight off, for any value above 85, the health will be On track. And, for any value below the lower critical of 50, the health will be At risk.

• Before the due date, if the progress is below 85, then the health will vary between Behind and At risk.

• Past the due date, if the progress is above 85, then the health would be Achieved, and with any other value outside the limit, the health will be At risk.

Maintain Below:

Use this tracking customization when you want your target to be below a certain value. For example, average response time is good if its below 3 hours. So, when the progress is any number below 3 hours, the measure is set to be on track, till the due date.

Let's consider this example: 

The Takt time must be maintained below 30 seconds. In this case, the Upper limit is set at 30 and the Minimum value is 0 and the Upper critical is 50.

• Straight off, for any value below 30, the health will be On track. And, for any value above the upper critical of 50, the health will be At risk.

• Before the due date, if the progress is above 30, then the health will vary between Behind and At risk.

• Past the due date, if the progress is below 30, then the health would be Achieved, and with any other value outside the limit, the health will vary based on the calculations.

FAQs

I want to make a progress for a date in the past.

There is no option to make historical data points with maintain measures.

What happens if the measure is past the due date?

If the progress is within the range that's set, then the health of On track will be changed to Achieved. However, if the progress is outside the range or limits, then the health labels vary between Behind and At risk. 

Can I pull insights on these maintain measures?

Yes. If you wish to pull insights from measures that've "maintain targets" specified, you can use "Single Measure Performance" widget or "Current State of Measure" widget (single measure performances) in your dashboards or create a "Measures table" or "Discover View with entity as Measures" in your report and apply filter as "Condition is maintain or Not maintain".

I do not see the Edit data table to change the expected progress.

Yes, that's the intended behavior. With maintain measures, the due date and the critical limits that you set impact the progress and thereby the health of the measure. There is no concept of expected progress with maintain measures and that's why you'll not be able to see the table to make any changes.

Why is there no progress percentage (%) for measures that has "maintain" options enabled?

We've recently enabled some changes to avoid complexity in understanding progress with maintain measures. Since "Maintain measures" are not tracked from 0-100% achievement and instead they're representations of if your current progress on that measure is within a target range at a given time, we've removed the progress percentage. The progress bar of an objective that has only maintain measures as success criteria is also been hidden for the same reason.