Instrument, as a verb in 📝John Zdanowski's vocabulary, means to build a dashboard of metrics that works like the instruments on an airplane, so an operator can see what is happening at each step of a process.
A typical use: “After we instrumented the process, we could understand what was happening at each step.” The sense extends the noun. It is the instruments on a plane that make it possible for the pilot to fly it, and an instrumented business gives the people running it the same kind of readings. In engineering, to instrument a system is to fit it with sensors that measure and record its behavior; John carries that usage into finance.
In 📝Weekly Accounting, the business is the system being instrumented. The work starts from the company's 📝Systems Diagram, the map of the applications it runs on, gathers their data in one place, and arranges the resulting metrics on the 📝Instrumentation Pyramid, from the 📝Vital Signs that forecast the business down to the detail used to run it. The instruments are then read every week in 📝Monday Morning Metrics (MMM).
Instrumenting differs from reporting. A report describes a period after it closes; instruments are read while the business is moving, so a team can steer rather than only explain.
We instrument the Systems Diagram for 📝rapidly growing companies.