Many times, the goal is simply uptime.  For an internet startup, whose revenue is based on traffic / advertising, this isn’t good enough.  The tech team needs to be driven to increase the effectiveness of the product instead of just keeping everything running.  How do you do this?  Take traffic into account.

It’ll be a rocky start, but take a look at the last few months.  Estimate how much time was spent on tech maintenance-related tasks, then divide that by traffic.  This is your first budget number — a cost per pageview number.  If the tech team spends less than the budget during the next month on maintenance-related items, the entire team shares the difference.  It’s a monetary incentive.

And here’s the catch: when the team beats the budget, the new number becomes the new budget.  Now they have to work even harder to beat it next time — it’s self regulating.