Valeo · security governance / February 2026
A KPI is only useful if you can trace it back to its source
Management metrics needed a traceable data path. A number is not trustworthy merely because it looks good in a dashboard; we need to know which records and which calculation rules produced it.
Situation
As reporting became more sophisticated, more aggregate numbers appeared. That also increased the risk of a KPI developing a life of its own: copied into one presentation, then another table, until a few weeks later nobody can say which source state it originally represented. In an audit context, that loss of provenance is especially dangerous.
Approach
For each important metric, I documented the calculation rule and source dataset. Aggregation remained decomposable back to individual items. When a KPI definition changed, I treated that as a new version instead of silently rewriting history. The presentation itself kept only the level of detail needed for the decision.
Outcome
The numbers became debatable but verifiable — which is a strength. When someone asked why a metric had moved, the answer could come from the underlying data rather than intuition. Differences between reports also became much easier to detect.