🌟Editor's Note
You know that feeling when you're presenting a dashboard full of green metrics but everyone in the room knows the project is secretly on fire? Yeah, we've all been there. Most PM dashboards are performance theater…pretty numbers that tell us nothing about whether we're actually succeeding.
This week, we’re skipping the vanity dashboards and going for the jugular:
The metrics that actually matter for Waterfall and Agile projects.
How to avoid “KPI Theater” (where charts look pretty but mean nothing).
How to translate numbers into action without sounding like a cyborg.
If you’ve been relying on “gut feel” to track project health, prepare to have your gut replaced with hard, actionable data.
Let’s have some fun ⤵️
📚 Essential Resources for Project Metrics
Before we dive into the metrics that matter, here are the resources that'll make you dangerous with dashboards:
📈 Lucid: 5 Steps for Creating Project KPIs to Align Team Goals and Objectives – Learn the lingo of success metrics when talking KPI’s to exec’s. Just drop these acronyms and wait for a promotion.
🎯 ClearPoint Strategy's Top 30 PM KPIs — Deep dive into productivity metrics, milestone tracking, and utilization rates. Great for building your three-layer metrics stack.
🎙️ Agile Metrics for 2025 — If you're running sprints, this breaks down velocity, burn-down, and cycle time in ways that actually help you improve team performance.
💡 Saviom's Top 7 Project Metrics Guide — Focused on the essentials. Cost, time, scope, quality, and resources. No fluff, just the metrics that keep projects on track.
🎯 The Usual Suspects, Split by Delivery Style
🌊 Waterfall Favorites
Schedule Variance (SV) – The delta between planned and actual schedule progress.
Cost Variance (CV) – Your budget’s “are we doomed?” indicator.
Planned Value (PV) – The work you should have completed by now.
Earned Value (EV) – The work you’ve actually completed.
Change Request Count – Scope creep’s ugly little paper trail.
🌀 Agile Go-Tos
Velocity – Average story points delivered per sprint.
Sprint Burndown – Tracks remaining work vs. sprint time.
Lead Time – Time from request to delivery.
Cycle Time – Time to complete one unit of work.
Escaped Defects – Bugs that made it into production.
Why split them? Because tracking “velocity” in a Waterfall project is like tracking “swimming speed” in a car race…completely irrelevant.
💪 Pro Tip: Don’t mix Waterfall and Agile metrics unless you want to confuse everyone. Different frameworks, different scoreboards.
📖 Suggested Read: Atlassian: Five Agile KPI Metrics You Won’t Hate
🛡️ The Anti-Metric Defense League (Avoiding KPI Misfires)
Bad KPIs are like bad dating profiles: great on paper, but useless in practice. They look impressive in a presentation but offer no help when your project is heading toward disaster. The most common traps?
Starting with the “What” instead of the “Why” – If you can’t explain in one sentence why you’re tracking a metric, you shouldn’t be tracking it.
Metric Hoarding – Some PMs treat KPIs like Pokémon cards: “Gotta catch ’em all.” Remember the “KISS” acronym from school? Keep It Simple Stupid.
No Action Plan – A KPI without a next step is just trivia.
How to defend against bad KPIs:
Start with the Why – Tie every metric directly to a project goal or risk.
Go Lean – Three to five solid KPIs per project phase is usually enough.
Automate Alerts – Don’t manually dig through data; let your tools flag anomalies.
Review and Retire – If a KPI hasn’t influenced a decision in 60 days, kill it.
💪 Pro Tip: KPIs aren’t tattoos. They’re more like sticky notes. Replace them as your project evolves.
🧠 KPIs Without the PTSD (The Human Side of Metrics)
Numbers are supposed to clarify, not terrify. But the wrong presentation can turn a perfectly manageable variance into a crisis.
Instead of hitting your team with: “SV is -15%”
Try: “We’re two days behind schedule. Here are three options to catch up - thoughts?”
Use metrics to start collaborative problem-solving, not finger-pointing. If your team starts dreading KPI reviews, you’re toast. Also, remember context: a 10% budget overrun could be a catastrophe or a smart investment; depends on the story behind it.
💪 Pro Tip: Pair every bad metric with at least one possible action. Panic without a plan is just noise.
📖 Suggested Read: PMI: Using KPIs to Drive Project Success
⚡Your KPI Game Plan for the Week
You don’t need to overhaul your entire reporting process to get smarter about KPIs. Just do this over the next week:
Audit Your Dashboard – Remove KPIs that don’t tie to a decision you’d actually make.
Establish a Baseline – Before you try to improve, figure out where you are today.
Hold a KPI Huddle – Once a week, pick one metric that surprised you and discuss why.
Set a Threshold Alarm – Automate alerts for budget overruns >5% or schedule slips >2 days.
Do this consistently for four weeks, and you’ll be making sharper, faster decisions without adding more work.
💪 Pro Tip: Your KPIs should feel like a dashboard in a race car; quick, useful, and impossible to ignore.
🚀 Quick Hits: Project Metrics Edition
Short, sharp updates on the world of project management to keep you in the loop:
PMI 2025 Pulse Report – Projects with active benefit realization tracking succeed 40% more often.
Jira Update – Auto-suggested KPI charts based on sprint history now available.
Forbes - The Right Way to Use KPIs in Project Management
🏁 Final Thoughts
KPIs and project metrics aren’t here to micromanage you, they’re here to help you steer. Think of them like your project’s personal trainer: sometimes they’re encouraging, sometimes they’re yelling, but they’re always trying to get you across the finish line.
Track fewer, better metrics. Keep context alive. Turn numbers into action.
And above all, don’t let your dashboard become a vanity mirror.
Till next time,
Project Pulse Team
If you have comments, feedback, or would like to see a specific topic covered in the newsletter - we’d love to hear from you!
📧 Email: [email protected].