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Software Engineering vocabulary · Agile and Team Workflow

Leading indicator

Meaning in software engineering, with examples

nounAdvanced term

In software engineering, leading indicator means: A metric that changes early and helps predict a future result, such as weekly logins predicting renewals, so a team can act before it is too late.

In Turkish: öncü gösterge

How it is used

The opposite is a lagging indicator, such as revenue or yearly churn, which shows results only after they happen. PMs look for leading indicators because they give faster feedback on whether a change is working.

Example sentences

  1. The number of projects created in the first week is a strong leading indicator of renewal.

  2. Revenue won't move for months, so let's agree on a leading indicator we can watch now.

Common collocations

  • lagging indicator
  • strong leading indicator
  • track leading indicators
  • leading and lagging indicators
  • metricA number measured regularly over time to show how a system is behaving, such as CPU use, memory, request count or error rate.
  • KPIShort for key performance indicator: one of a small number of metrics that a company or team has chosen to measure progress towards its main goals.
  • OKRShort for objectives and key results: a goal-setting method in which a team sets an inspiring objective and two to five measurable results that show progress toward it.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Agile and Team Workflow

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