Are Success Metrics for Projects and Initiatives Clearly Defined and Communicated to All Team Members?

In today's fast-paced, tech-driven environment, businesses are under constant pressure to deliver results. Yet, as companies grow and initiatives multiply, a common pain point emerges: are the success metrics for these projects and initiatives clearly defined and communicated to all team members?

In my experience, the failure to properly define and communicate project metrics is often at the heart of misaligned business goals, wasted resources, and frustration across teams. As someone who has worked closely with scaling tech companies and early-stage SMEs, I can attest that even the most talented teams can struggle without a shared understanding of success. Miscommunication—or worse, a lack of communication—on how success is measured can lead to confusion, missed opportunities, and ultimately, failure to meet strategic goals.

Let’s unpack why this happens and what can be done to ensure every team member understands how success is measured.

The Misalignment Between Technology Development and Business Goals

For many growing companies, particularly in sectors like SaaS, healthtech, or fintech, there is often a disconnect between the technological development of a product and the overarching business strategy. Leaders may be focused on revenue targets or expanding into new markets, while tech teams are concentrating on delivering features that may or may not align with these goals.

This misalignment often arises when success metrics aren’t defined from the start, or when they evolve without proper communication. It’s not enough for the leadership team to understand the goals—they must be clearly communicated, broken down, and tied to every part of the organisation. As a result, metrics often feel like an afterthought, something imposed after projects are well underway, which leads to resource misallocation and a loss of momentum.

I recall one instance working with a fintech startup where the tech team was fervently focused on optimising their product’s backend to handle more transactions. However, the executive team was prioritising user acquisition and didn’t view the backend work as an immediate need. The result? Confusion, frustration, and, ultimately, a delay in achieving critical user growth milestones. The lesson here is that without clear and shared success metrics, teams can waste energy on tasks that don't drive the business forward.

The Role of Leadership in Defining Success Metrics

Leadership is central to ensuring success metrics are clearly defined and communicated. Unfortunately, a lack of strong, visible technology leadership is a challenge for many SMEs and scaling startups. Without this, there's often a void where strategic technology decisions should be aligned with broader business objectives​.

A fractional CTO or strategic technology advisor can play a key role here. They bring an external perspective, aligning tech strategy with business goals, and ensuring that success metrics are set in a way that everyone in the organisation understands. I've seen this approach work well in many cases, especially where internal teams are junior or lack commercial awareness. Bringing in a senior technology leader to establish, articulate, and communicate these success metrics ensures that the tech team isn't working in a silo, disconnected from business outcomes​.

Breaking Down Success Metrics: From Big Picture to Daily Tasks

Defining success metrics isn’t just about setting lofty business goals. It requires breaking down high-level objectives into actionable, measurable tasks for every team member. This step is often missed, and it's why many projects falter.

For example, a typical startup might have a company-wide goal of increasing customer retention by 20% in the next quarter. While this is a clear and measurable objective, it may not be immediately obvious to a junior developer or a marketing team member how their daily tasks contribute to this. Success metrics must be translated into clear KPIs for each department, team, and individual, ensuring that everyone understands how their work feeds into the broader goal.

In one of my own projects with a healthtech company, we made it a point to hold cross-functional meetings where team leads would break down the company’s quarterly goals into department-specific KPIs. The tech team was responsible for creating a more user-friendly interface to improve engagement, while the customer success team focused on reducing churn through better support. Each team had clear metrics tied to the overall goal of improving customer retention, and it was easy to track whether progress was being made on all fronts.

Transparent Communication is Key

Clear, frequent, and transparent communication is essential for success metrics to be effectively understood across the company. It’s not enough to define metrics once at the start of a project and assume they’ll guide everyone’s work for months to come. Teams need regular updates, feedback loops, and a forum for discussing how their work is progressing in relation to the success metrics.

One key mistake I see companies make is assuming that communicating success metrics is a one-off event. For instance, goals may be presented at an all-hands meeting, but if these are not reinforced and revisited regularly, they can quickly fade into the background. Instead, I’ve found that the most effective approach is to bake these metrics into the company's everyday processes—weekly check-ins, monthly reviews, and even daily standups, if needed.

A particularly memorable case involved an eCommerce client who was launching a new product line. While the leadership team was clear on the business goals, the development and marketing teams were working in parallel but without clear guidance on how their individual work contributed to the overall success. By introducing bi-weekly check-ins focused solely on project metrics, we were able to realign the teams and ensure everyone was pulling in the same direction. This significantly improved the project’s trajectory and the eventual product launch.

Measuring the Right Metrics

Not all metrics are created equal, and one of the critical aspects of ensuring project success is choosing the right ones. It’s surprisingly common for businesses to fixate on vanity metrics—data points that look good on paper but don’t necessarily contribute to long-term success. Think of a social media manager who’s tasked with growing follower numbers, but that metric doesn’t correlate to actual customer acquisition or sales growth.

To avoid this trap, every success metric should pass the “so what?” test. Ask yourself: if we hit this target, what will it mean for the business? If the answer isn’t directly tied to tangible business outcomes, it’s worth reconsidering whether that metric should be a priority.

During my time with a SaaS startup, I encountered a similar situation. The company was overly focused on increasing the number of new sign-ups, but they weren’t looking at the retention rate, which was much more crucial to the long-term growth of the business. By shifting focus to metrics that reflected ongoing user engagement and customer lifetime value, the company was able to make more strategic decisions about product development and marketing efforts.

Empowering Teams to Own Their Metrics

It’s not enough for leadership to define and communicate success metrics; teams must also be empowered to take ownership of these metrics. When individuals and teams have a stake in the success metrics, they’re more likely to be engaged, motivated, and proactive in their work.

I’ve found that this works best when teams are involved in setting their own KPIs. This doesn’t mean that leadership should take a hands-off approach; rather, it’s about collaboration. Leadership provides the high-level objectives, but teams should have input into what the success metrics look like on a more granular level. This approach fosters a sense of ownership and accountability.

A fintech company I consulted for took this approach with great success. Rather than imposing KPIs from the top down, team leads worked with their teams to set realistic, actionable metrics that aligned with the company's broader goals. This not only improved performance but also created a culture of transparency and trust. Teams felt empowered to take risks and innovate, knowing that their work directly impacted the success of the business.

What Happens When Success Metrics Aren’t Defined?

The dangers of not defining or clearly communicating success metrics are manifold. Without clear metrics, projects can drift off course, resources can be wasted, and teams can become disengaged. Worse, without a shared understanding of what success looks like, it’s impossible to track progress or pivot when things aren’t going well.

One common outcome is the feeling of a “lack of progress,” even when the team is working hard​. This happens when there are no concrete benchmarks to measure against. If team members don’t know how their work contributes to the bigger picture, they can quickly become demoralised. A lack of progress metrics also makes it difficult to recognise and celebrate wins, which are crucial for maintaining morale in fast-paced environments.

Ensuring Long-Term Success Through Metrics

For companies to thrive in today’s competitive landscape, defining and communicating success metrics isn’t just a nice-to-have—it’s essential. These metrics guide not only the day-to-day work of your team but also the broader strategic decisions that will determine your company’s long-term success.

As a leader, it’s your responsibility to ensure that success metrics are clearly articulated, communicated often, and understood by everyone in the organisation. If done well, this practice will lead to better alignment, more effective resource allocation, and a higher likelihood of meeting your company’s strategic goals.

In the end, success is a team effort. But for that team to succeed, everyone needs to know what success looks like and how to get there.