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COMPEL Glossary / lagging-indicator

Lagging indicator

A metric that confirms an outcome after the fact — e.g., quarterly revenue, retention after 90 days, defect rate after release.

What this means in practice

Used as the ground-truth for value measurement but too slow to drive operational decisions alone; typically paired with leading indicators.

Synonyms

lagging metric , outcome indicator

See also

  • Leading indicator — A metric that moves before the outcome does — predicting near-term outcome trajectory.
  • Primary metric — The single metric whose movement drives an experiment's ship/no-ship decision.
  • Realized value — The outcome the organisation actually captures from an AI feature, after accounting for adoption, override, and drift effects — distinct from shipped value, which is the theoretical capacity.
  • Measurement plan — A pre-launch document naming hypothesis, metrics, sources, cadence, analysis method, and decision rule for an AI feature.

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