In the logistics world, Turns are the measure of inventory velocity. 12 turns per year means that you typically keep about 1 month’s inventory on hand. There are several ways to measure it, but they all come back to the same concept. Generally speaking, the more turns you have per year without losing the ability to serve customers, the more lean and efficient your model.
The same is true for technology. In today’s world, a system that doesn’t change for a year is typically looked at with disdain. Everyone is pushing updates at a regular clip. The idea being that an agile, fluid approach keeps you firmly at the front of the market.
Having come out of the logistics space, I think that Technology Turns as a measure of agility is a useful metric. If you release only 1 significant customer upgrade a year that gives you 1 Turn. 2 significant upgrades is 2 Turns. And so that pattern goes.
In order to make this work though, we need to define a “significant customer upgrade.” To that I would propose: any new release that has features that might entice someone not yet using the system to try it out. This could be a marketing refresh, a new module, new convenience tools, etc. But this would not include adding or modifying fields or cleaning up things behind the scenes.
Don’t get me wrong, a lot of work goes into those non-customer significant upgrades (my words). And while they may be making your existing customers happy, they aren’t doing anything to further the brand or bring in new users entirely.
Increasing Technology Turns is not a simple feat. It takes a robust back-end, great developers and a fool-proof QA process (because no loss of customer service can be accepted). But getting it right and drive your Turns up could be a key to your success.