6 operational KPIs that PMs swear by

Why top PMs swear by these 6 operational KPIs

July 08, 2025

Read time: 7 minutes Words: 1000

This month, we’re diving into the operational metrics of the FOS framework - the KPIs that measure efficiency and effectiveness in how your team delivers work.

To help us break it down, we spoke with Natasha Miteva Davitkovski, co-founder and CEO of Ops 8, a DevOps consultancy helping teams optimize flow and performance at scale. Plus: 

  • 2025 PM salary report and what’s next for project management

  • How tracking billable and non-billable hours can help you manage your project scope creep

P.S New here? Here is a little refresher: The FOS framework is our approach to smarter project metrics, organized across three layers:

  • Foundational (financial health)

  • Operational (efficiency & execution)

  • Strategic (innovation & long-term value)

Let’s dive in!

Last month, we covered foundational metrics - the financial KPIs that tell you whether a project is viable and profitable. (Missed it? Catch up here).

This month, we’re shifting focus to the operational layer of the FOS framework - metrics that show how efficiently your team is delivering work.

Operational metrics help project managers monitor flow, remove blockers, and improve performance in real-time, before small delays become big problems. 

📊 1. Resource utilization

Formula:
Utilization (%) = (Actual Working Hours on Project / Total Available Hours) × 100

Why it matters:

  • Reveals how efficiently your team is being used

  • Highlights over- or under-utilization risks

  • Informs hiring, scheduling, and workload balancing

How it helps:
Improves capacity planning and maximizes the value of every hour on your payroll.

Expert insight:

Resource utilization reveals how effectively my team's capacity is being used. When it's too high, it signals potential burnout and declining performance; when it's too low, it often points to misaligned priorities or unclear responsibilities. In either case, I take immediate action by reviewing task allocation, collaborating with the team to rebalance workloads, streamlining workflows, and addressing any blockers before they impact progress

Natasha M. Dav

⏱ 2. Cycle time

Formula:
Cycle Time = Completion Date – Start Date (per task, feature, or phase)

Why it matters:

  • Shows how fast work items are completed

  • Identifies bottlenecks and blockers

  • Improves delivery predictability

How it helps:
Cycle time helps teams set realistic expectations with clients and stakeholders, while continuously improving workflows.

Expert insight:

Cycle time is my go-to metric for spotting where work is getting stuck—it shines a light on bottlenecks, unclear ownership, or friction in the process. When tracked across stages or teams, it reveals exactly where slowdowns happen. If velocity is inconsistent, I use retrospectives to uncover root causes like underestimation or context switching, which helps me coach teams more effectively and address issues where they matter most. And if I had to pick only one metric I could track? It would be cycle time

Natasha M. Dav


📈 3. Throughput

Formula:
Throughput = Number of Work Items Completed / Time Period

Why it matters:

  • Tracks how much your team actually delivers

  • Highlights team output capacity

  • Useful for measuring delivery trends over time

How it helps:
Improves forecasting and sprint planning, especially when combined with cycle time.

Expert insight:

This is about volume: how many tasks, features, or deliverables are completed within a given period. It’s especially useful for tracking productivity trends across sprints or months…When the team is working hard but output stays low, that typically points to inefficient handoffs, poor prioritization, or work-in-progress overload.

Natasha M. Dav

🔁 4. Project churn

Definition:
Project Churn = Frequency of major scope changes, restarts, or repeated deliverables in a given time period.

Why it matters:

  • Indicates instability in planning or decision-making

  • Impacts team morale and delivery momentum

  • Often signals unclear objectives or poor stakeholder alignment

How it helps:
Helps PMs push for clarity earlier in the process and flag when scope or direction is out of control.

Expert insight:

This measures how often projects are started but not completed, or drastically change scope mid-way. High churn reflects poor prioritization, lack of stakeholder alignment, or inadequate operational readiness. It feeds directly into leadership decisions. If we’re seeing too many mid-project changes, it’s a cue to re-evaluate planning habits or tighten alignment between stakeholders and delivery teams

Natasha M. Dav

📅 5. Percent plan complete (PPC)

Formula:
PPC (%) = (Number of Completed Planned Tasks / Total Planned Tasks) × 100

Why it matters:

  • Tracks how reliably the team executes the weekly work plan

  • Reveals planning gaps, delays, or execution blockers

  • Builds a culture of accountability through measurable goals

How it helps:
Boosts schedule predictability and helps teams improve planning accuracy over time.

Expert insight

On a $15M radiology project, our low PPC scores revealed a deeper issue: most delays stemmed from incomplete design coordination. Instead of blaming teams, we used PPC as a diagnostic tool to justify adding coordination resources, which helped resolve the root cause and improve workflow.

Kyle Nitchen

😊 6. Employee satisfaction score

Formula:
Usually gathered via a survey (e.g., 1–10 rating or Net Promoter Score-style question)

Why it matters:

  • Indicates team morale and engagement - core drivers of productivity

  • Correlates with performance, retention, and project quality

  • Flags culture or workload issues before they become turnover

How it helps:
Improves team stability, reduces rework, and supports a healthy project environment.

Expert insight:

Early in my career, I prioritized schedule and budget over team engagement, which led to burnout and costly mistakes. Now I track weekly team pulse surveys and participation rates in our Last Planner sessions. Engaged teams don't just feel better—they perform better and catch problems before they escalate.

Kyle Nitchen

In the final issue of our FOS series, we’ll explore the Strategic layer—the metrics that look beyond delivery to measure long-term value, innovation, and adaptability.

These KPIs help answer questions like:

  • Are we building for the future, not just finishing tasks?

  • How resilient is our team when priorities shift?

  • Are we creating sustainable, meaningful outcomes?

This month’s can't-miss resources:

🗓 Conference - Agile 2025 @28-30th of July, Denver, Colorado

🗓 Panel - Designing your PM career for more pay and purpose @16th of July, 6:00 pm GMT+2

Thank you for reading! See you next month

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