Data MonstersA field guide

The bestiary · The Headless KPI

The Headless KPI avatar

Haunting 4 data teams

Specimen · catalogued monster

The Headless KPI

Rides into the board meeting with no owner and no source

4Data teams haunted

4 of 21On the leaderboard

A proud and gleaming figure, it gallops through every quarterly review, scattering confidence and confusion in equal measure. Ask where it came from and it simply thunders past, head held high, if only it had one.

Symptoms

  • Board KPIs with no named owner
  • No lineage from the number back to source
  • Movements nobody can explain
  • Figures hand-assembled for each board pack
  • "Where does this come from?" goes unanswered

Weakness

Give it a head: a named owner for every board metric, documented lineage back to source, and a certified KPI layer the board pack reads from.

Overheard in the corridor

  • “Who actually owns this number?”
  • “It's always been calculated that way.”
  • “Nobody can explain why it dropped.”
  • “Can someone trace this back to source before Thursday?”