KPIs

A KPI here is a number somebody has undertaken to move: uptime, churn, lead time, NPS. You define it, you record what it reads, and you say what it has to reach and by when.

It is off until somebody switches it on. An owner or admin turns it on under Settings → Workspace; until then there is no KPIs in the sidebar.

The three things

The KPI	What is measured: a name, a unit, how precise, which way is better, and how often you have undertaken to measure it
A reading	One measurement — a day, a value, and where the number came from
A target	What it has to reach, and by when — or by which milestone

You type the numbers in

Kolibri does not scrape your monitoring or query your warehouse. The figures a team actually reports on come from systems that are not this one, so readings are entered by hand or posted by an assistant over MCP.

That is a real cost, and the cadence field is what pays it back. You say how often you will measure, and a reading older than twice that is reported as stale rather than quoted as current — because “we’re at 94 %” from a number nobody has refreshed since March is not a statement about today.

What “on track” means here

Not “close to the target”. A KPI is on track when it has come further than the days have: past a straight line drawn from where it started to where it has to be by the deadline.

• On track — at or past that line
• At risk — behind the line, but still on the right side of where it started
• Off track — it has gone the wrong way

Both figures are on the screen — how far it has come, and where the line says it should be by now — so you can show the reasoning instead of asserting the colour. There is no hidden tolerance band.

Three answers that are not judgements

Not measured	Nobody has taken a reading. Nothing can be on track
No target	It is measured, but nobody has said what it should be
Stale	The last reading is more than twice the cadence old

These are counted in their own right on the KPI list, and they sort into the middle rather than at either end. A KPI nobody has measured is not a crisis and it is not fine, and a dashboard that shows it as green by leaving it out is the thing this is built to refuse. Stale outranks on track: a number nobody has refreshed is not evidence, however good it looks.

A target due by a milestone

Give a target a milestone instead of a date and it takes that milestone’s date, live.

This is the point of the link. The promise was “90 % by the time we ship”, not “90 % by 30 June” — so when the release slips a month, the target slips with it instead of becoming a miss. The milestone’s own page reads the same link backwards and lists what has to be true by the time it lands, beside what has to be built.

Deleting a milestone leaves its targets standing, undated: cancelling a release does not cancel the promise. Deleting a KPI does take its readings and targets with it.

Several targets are a ladder

“85 % by June, 90 % by December” is two targets, not one you edited. The one in force is the next one still ahead; once they have all passed, the last one stands — you do not stop having a target because the date went by, you have one you are late for.

Reading the chart

Two things about it are deliberate and worth knowing:

• The gaps are real. Readings sit where they were taken, so three months without a measurement look like three months without a measurement.
• The scale does not start at zero, and both ends of it are printed beside the plot. A percentage moving between 90 and 100 drawn from zero is a flat line at the top and tells you nothing.

The measured line is a neutral colour on purpose. Half of all KPIs are better when the line falls, so a green line climbing would be a picture arguing with itself.

Where the figures are

Where	What
KPIs in the sidebar	Every one, worst first, with the current value, the change, the target and the pace
A KPI	The chart, its readings, its targets, and its settings
A milestone	What has to be true by the time it lands
An assistant	list_kpis, kpi_status, create_kpi, record_measurement, set_kpi_target — see the assistant

What it is not

• Not OKRs. No objectives above these, no grouping into key results, no scoring.
• Not alerting. Nothing emails anybody when a KPI turns red.
• Not a band. A KPI is better going up or better going down. A target with a floor and a ceiling would need a second figure on every target and every screen, and is written down as a limit rather than half-built.