PM Quality Metric

Action items shipped.

Overview

Counting postmortems is the wrong metric. Counting action-item completion plus repeat-incident reduction is the right one. PM quality is what produces less downtime next quarter; PM volume is just paperwork.

• Action items shipped. Per-PM, the share of action items closed within their committed deadline.
• Per-quarter completion SLO. Target an explicit completion rate (typically 80 percent within the quarter the PM was written).
• Repeat incident reduction. Per-pattern recurrence rate. The same root cause firing again is the cleanest signal that the action items missed.
• Time-to-PM and per-team rollup. Time from incident close to published PM; per-team rollups surface teams that need investment.

The approach

Three habits keep PM quality measurable: track action-item completion as a standing metric, measure repeat-incident rate per pattern, and publish team rollups so the data steers investment conversations.

• Action completion rate. Per-quarter dashboard. Action items past deadline page the owner; aggregate completion appears in the engineering review.
• Repeat-incident audit. Each PM tags the root-cause pattern. Same pattern firing twice triggers a deeper investment conversation.
• Time-to-PM target. 5 business days from incident close to published draft. Slower than that means the lessons fade.
• Per-team rollups. Quality metrics per team feed the engineering operating review, not just the on-call retro.

Why this compounds

Measuring quality changes behaviour. Each measured cohort produces incrementally better PMs; the team’s incident maturity compounds.

• Better PMs. Measurement biases the team toward shipping action items rather than writing prose.
• Stronger follow-through. Action-completion rate becomes a standing operating number, which keeps the work visible.
• Cultural signal. Measurement signals that PMs matter. Teams invest accordingly.
• Year-one investment, year-two habit. The first quarter takes effort to instrument. By year two the metric is part of the standard review.