You Have Too Many Metrics

The golden rule of metrics is simple: any metric you maintain must drive action when it falls outside expected bounds. Setting up a metric costs time and money, so you should only keep those that justify that expense. When a metric sits idle, it becomes a costly pacifier for managers who lack strategic focus.

Effective metrics have three habits: a regular review cadence, clear expectations about acceptable ranges, and a commitment to act when those expectations are breached. Review prevents drift and hidden bugs, expectations turn raw numbers into decision signals, and action ensures the metric remains worth the overhead. The article shows how a single broken definition can linger for months, and how an explicit 2% cost-over-forecast rule can turn noisy data into a trigger for real cost-saving work.

Real-world examples illustrate the point. An ambitious PM filled a dashboard with seven product-specific CSAT scores, using them only to justify raises and resource requests, never to drive improvement. A cost-review process that only flags changes above 2% of forecast forces teams to act on meaningful shifts while ignoring noise. The takeaway is that a few well-chosen, action-oriented metrics beat a wall of irrelevant graphs any day.