Metric
Definition
A metric is any quantity a business measures — a count, a rate, a ratio, or an average — that describes something which happened. Every KPI is a metric, but most metrics are not KPIs: a metric becomes an indicator only once someone owns it, sets a target for it, and reviews it on a cadence. Everything else is instrumentation.
Metrics come in a small number of shapes: counts (signups), rates (trial-to-paid conversion), averages (deal size), and ratios (lifetime value to acquisition cost). Three things make one usable — a written definition, a named source system, and a stated period. Without those, two teams arrive at the same meeting with different numbers for the same word and spend the hour reconciling rather than deciding. Metrics are also either leading or lagging, which determines whether they can still be influenced.
Measurability quietly shapes attention. The things easiest to instrument — page views, tickets closed, features shipped — reach the dashboard whether or not they matter, while harder-to-capture outcomes stay off it entirely. The question worth asking of any metric is what decision would change if it moved twenty percent in either direction.
Example
'Monthly active users' at one company means any account that logged in during the month; at another it means an account that completed a core action. The first reports 12,400, the second 4,900 — same product, same month, both correct under their own definitions.
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