How often should we update and review the dashboard?

Nightly is enough for most teams. Add near-real-time only for deploy frequency and incident panels if you truly need it. Run a weekly 30-minute review to pick one experiment, and a monthly DX pulse to capture sentiment.

How do we avoid Goodhart’s Law?

Use outcomes, not activity metrics. Track p50 and p90, slice by team, and pair numbers with qualitative feedback from the DX pulse. Never tie individual compensation to these metrics; use them to guide system improvements.

What if we’re a small team without BigQuery or Grafana?

Use `Looker Studio` with `Google Sheets` connectors for a scrappy start, or `Grafana Cloud Free` with `GitHub` and `CircleCI Insights`. Keep the seven panels and codify definitions in the repo README until you grow into IaC.

How do we calculate change failure rate without perfect incident data?

Use deploy-triggered rollbacks, `Sentry` release error spikes, or `feature-flag off` events as proxies. Start with a simple two-hour window after deploy; refine later as incident hygiene improves.

Should we track individual engineer metrics?

No. Team-level metrics drive systemic improvements. Individual scorecards breed sandbagging and fear, which worsens delivery and satisfaction.

Platform-productivity · Oct 1, 2025 · 9 minute read

Dashboards Developers Don’t Hate: A Paved Road for DX Metrics That Actually Moves the Needle

You don’t need 80 panels and a data-wrangling PhD. Here’s the simple, trustworthy DX dashboard that improves MTTR, lead time, and satisfaction—with real wiring, not bespoke science projects.

Back to all posts

Dashboards Developers Don’t Hate: A Paved Road for DX Metrics That Actually Moves the Needle

Key takeaways

Implementation checklist