If I asked you, “Would you like to increase your performance?” chances are the answer would be, “Yes.”

All of us want to be faster, safer, and more reliable. We want—and need—to reach innovations more rapidly than anyone else. Performance fuels the path to get there. But what does that really mean?

There are two definitions for “performance”:

• An act of staging or presenting a play, concert, or other form of entertainment
• The action or process of carrying out or accomplishing an action, task, or function

Of course, in the test industry, we’re concerned with the latter definition. Test engineers are driven by accomplishing complex functions, right? But what I like about comparing the two definitions of “performance” is that it can be a good reminder for all of us to really look into our processes. Are our established workflows serving the company goals, or are they more like a familiar rehearsal we’ve memorized? Stepping outside of ourselves and critically evaluating tasks is the best way to start increasing performance—and not just for test.

For nearly 100 years, the British Cycling team was exceptionally mediocre. They only won a single gold medal in that time, and never finished on top for the Tour de France. The only consistent thing about the team was that they kept losing time and time again. But in 2003, they brought on a new performance director, Dave Brailsford.

Dave had an innovative idea. He thought that if the team analyzed and measured all the small things that were part of riding a bike and improved them just a little, those small gains would add up to something bigger. To collect this data, they used biofeedback sensors to measure what happened to the athletes when they made small changes. They did wind tunnel testing and found that different types of fabrics made small improvements. If data could be collected, they analyzed it. Over time, they used all this data to optimize many small things—a one percent gain here, half a percent gain there. And they started to improve. Not just improve but dominate. In the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the British Cycling team won eight of the 14 events in indoor and road cycling. In 2012 in London, they performed even better, setting seven world records and nine Olympic records.

And all because of how they approached data to optimize very small parts of their processes. OutPerform is a new digital publication devoted to increasing performance. It will show you what ideal performance can look like and how to get there, with a little bit of fun along the way. The measurement and test data we gather tells us the information we need to know to make both small and big improvements to our systems and processes. These will ultimately lead to massive leaps in the performance of our products. Because whether you’re trying to catch up with the rest of the marketplace in business, or breaking athletic world records, there is always room for improvement.