Following Happiness and Lost Time trends is another way to get more insights from your experience data.
Why follow the trend?
Trend helps you focus on long term / high-level development, not the daily changes. The variance may be quite big on short periods of time, because of the smaller response volumes on Happiness and Lost Time.
By showing the trend line on the timeline graph, you can also see when you will reach your target by keeping your current trend, or when you will fall under the target.
How is the trend line drawn?
The trend line shown is the straight line that best fits the shown curve of daily Happiness or Lost Time values. In other words, the data points considered in the calculation are all the daily values in the chosen time period that have non-zero volume. The daily values themselves are 7-day weighted moving averages (weighted by volume). The method used for finding the best fit is ordinary least squares.
How is the trend value calculated?
You can see the current trend value on:
- Reports, above the Timeline main graph
- Dashboard, in "IT at a glance" view, for each Measurement Area
The trend value displays is the difference between the beginning and end of selected time period. This is not the change in your actual scores but the change of the trend.
How to use the trend?
View the overall trend values on the Dashboard, or look at the trend on Reports by selecting any filters or earlier saved Shortcuts and check the trend graph and number in the timeline graph.
The number shows how much Happiness or Lost Time goes up or down over the chosen time period. It is the difference between the beginning and end values of the shown trend line. Use that and the visualisation to understand if things are going in the right direction and how fast!
It is good to take into account that the reliability of the trend is better when response volume is higher (longer time period and/or less filters selected). Notice also that trend is calculated when there are only a few days with non-zero response volume in the selected view.
Always check the volumes the trend calculation is based on. Unreliable or surprising trends can happen particularly when choosing a time period with only a small number of past days and a large number of future days (such as "This month" at the beginning of a calendar month), or when there's a wide gap of zero volume days between low volume days at one or both ends of the selected period.