KPI
A KPI is a number chosen to stand for how well something is going, tracked over time so a change in it means something has changed in the business.
Also written: key performance indicatorArabic: مؤشر الأداء الرئيسي
The word doing the work is "chosen"
A KPI is a decision about what to pay attention to, and it is therefore also a decision about what to ignore. Most bad KPIs are not wrong numbers, they are numbers nobody chose — inherited from a template, or from a system's default report.
What a real one has
An owner, a target, and a stated relationship to something you actually care about. A number that goes up with no consequence attached is a statistic. It becomes a KPI when someone is accountable for it and something happens when it moves.
Related terms
Questions people ask
Few. Past about five, attention divides and none of them drives behaviour — which was the only reason to have them.
When it can be improved without improving the thing it stands for. Any measure people are judged on will eventually be optimised directly, so pick ones where doing that is the same as doing the real work.
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