Scorecard
Definition
A scorecard is a short, fixed list of metrics — usually five to fifteen — reviewed on the same rhythm every week or month, with an owner, a target, and the current actual beside each row. Its job is to make the state of the business readable at a glance and to surface anything off-target early enough that the quarter can still be changed.
A scorecard is deliberately narrow and deliberately stable: the same rows, in the same order, every period, so that trends are visible without anyone building a chart. Most teams show the last eight to thirteen periods alongside the current one. The review itself is fast — on-target rows are read and passed over, and only the off-target rows earn discussion, which is what keeps the segment to a few minutes inside a longer meeting.
Scorecards decay in two directions. They grow until they are a report nobody reads, or they freeze while the business changes, so every row stays green while the real constraint moves somewhere the scorecard does not look. Both are the same problem: the list gets reviewed every week and revisited almost never.
Example
A 40-person software company's weekly scorecard: new MRR (target $25k, actual $19k), gross churn (target under 1.5%, actual 2.1%), qualified demos booked (target 30, actual 34), NPS (target 40, actual 38), and cash runway in months (target above 18, actual 21).
See also: scorecard software