Actually, the A's did have a streak of playoff appearances 6+ years ago under Beane's system[1]. Reading the book, Moneyball, I came away with the conclusion t

Actually, the A's did have a streak of playoff appearances 6+ years ago under Beane's system[1]. Reading the book, Moneyball, I came away with the conclusion that the success of Beane's system boiled down the fact that they started measuring everything and making empirical decisions based on data rather than emotion or "gut" checks. In turn, this let them find value where others saw failure. In a competitive environment with limited resources (players Beane's instance) this system will work up to the point where few, if any, try it--meaning lots of overlooked value exists. One point at the end of the book was that the Red Sox, when they hired Theo Eptstein as their GM, brought in one of Beane's assistants to implement the system the A's were using. As more teams start using it, the quantity of undervalued players decreases because everyone starts valuing the same thing. Start up takeaway: Measure everything and make decisions based on empirical results instead of "gut" checks. That's really what it boils down to. I'm not just talking about the front-end stuff like landing pages, conversion rates, clicks, etc. Measure it all, response times, database operation times, network transmission time, average request size, whatever you can get your hands on. Having all that data will allow you to make informed decisions and identify places for improvement to increase value. That's my takeaway. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Beane http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Beane