InformationWeek Podcast: Coping when internal metrics go off course

Aaron Harris, CTO at Sage, and Jerry Shu, CTO and co-founder of Daylit, share how they avoid letting questionable metrics derail optimization plans.

Joao-Pierre S. Ruth,Senior Editor,InformationWeek

August 4, 2026

Sometimes, chasing optimized numbers leads to less-than-desirable IT results. What looked good on paper or on a screen may ignore the context behind the data. It is not uncommon for companies to misunderstand customer behavior, but how do CTOs handle internal metrics that lead to questionable IT decisions?

In this episode of the InformationWeek Podcast, Jerry Shu, CTO and co-founder of Daylit, and Aaron Harris, CTO at Sage, discuss how they approach IT optimization and what they watch for if something does not add up.

What happens when the faster development and deployment desired from IT optimization overlooks the context of where the metrics came from?

Harris and Shu explore which employees, beyond the IT team, should help develop internal metrics or vet optimization results. They also discuss changing course when an optimization plan fails to improve operations or causes disruptions.

Shu and Harris then take on the Questionable Ideas tabletop exercise, where they help the fictional company deal with resources that seemed to offer benefits while exposing the business to more trouble, thanks to the resident goblins, gremlins and kobolds.

How does your organization course-correct when internal metrics lead to less-than-desirable outcomes? Let us know at [email protected].

About the Author

Joao-Pierre S. Ruth

Senior Editor, InformationWeek

Joao-Pierre S. Ruth edits stories for InformationWeek as well as reports on C-suite tech leaders across a multitude of industries and tech disciplines. He also hosts the InformationWeek Podcast, which brings together CIOs, CTOs, and other C-suite leadership to discuss their different approaches to addressing shared challenges. He joined InformationWeek in 2019, initially as a Senior Writer covering cloud computing and DevOps. He became a Senior Editor in 2023.

His work with InformationWeek garnered American Society of Business Publication Editors (ASBE) awards in 2024. This included "Could the DOJ's Antitrust Trial vs Google Drive More Innovation?" as part of the team’s Government Coverage, which collectively won a Bronze National award and a gold Northeast regional award, as well as a bronze regional award for a Web Feature Series on the environmental impact of data-driven organizations published during Earth Month. That award included his story "How Do Supercomputers Fit With Strategies for Sustainability?"

He has been a journalist for more than 25 years, reporting on business and technology first in New Jersey, then covering the New York tech startup community, and later as a freelancer for such outlets as TheStreet, Investopedia, and Street Fight.

Joao-Pierre can be reached via email at [email protected]

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