How many project KPIs should we track?
Metric overloadChoose a small set that supports actual decisions about outcomes, delivery, resources, quality, and exposure. Remove measures that nobody uses or that duplicate the same signal.
What to do now
- Identify recurring management decisions
- Choose measures relevant to each
- Define owners and calculation rules
- Review usefulness and retire unnecessary metrics
When to escalate
Escalate when
Important decisions lack reliable evidence despite extensive reporting.
Who decides
The metric owner and relevant decision maker
Example
A project uses a focused set of milestone, acceptance, cost-forecast, and blocker measures.
Mistake to avoid
Adding a KPI for every available database field.
Prevent a repeat
Check data freshness and meaning, and verify that the measure improves decisions rather than encouraging cosmetic progress.
Suggested ApprovedFlow setup
- Projects
- Tasks
- Timesheets
- Documents
Use the underlying named records and evidence when explaining a metric; validate any dashboard behavior against the current implementation. See the platform
Related cases
- How do we prevent people from gaming project metrics?Incentive-driven measurement distortion
- A metric improved after we changed its definition. Can we claim success?Broken metric comparability
- How do we track dependencies without building an unreadable chart?Dependency information overload
- How do we track the cumulative effect of many changes?Invisible aggregate change impact