Breaking the Molasses: Why Productivity Dashboards Need to Measure More Than Speed

Welcome to the third article in our Product Operations series, where we explore how teams can optimize cross-functional collaboration to match their moment of scale so that product teams can deliver value fast.

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In our previous articles, we discussed how implementing a clear decision-making framework can transform product delivery from chaos to clarity, and how the right mindset can transform portfolio reviews from ritual to results. Today, we're examining another critical aspect of product operations: productivity dashboards.

The Efficiency Trap

"We need a dashboard to see which teams need to be more efficient."

If you've worked in product delivery long enough, you've likely heard some version of this request from leadership. It's a reasonable ask on the surface, leaders want visibility into how teams are performing and where bottlenecks might exist.

But there's a fundamental flaw in this framing: it assumes that teams control all the factors affecting their productivity. It places the burden of "efficiency" solely on the shoulders of delivery teams, when in reality, many of the most significant barriers to flow exist at the organizational level.

This is where many productivity initiatives go wrong. Teams are measured, monitored, and managed based on metrics they only partially influence, while organizational impediments, what I like to call "molasses in the engine", remain invisible and unaddressed.

Team Flow vs. Organizational Flow

To truly understand and improve product delivery, we need to measure and optimize two distinct but interconnected types of flow:

1. Team Flow: How efficiently teams can complete work within their sphere of control

2. Organizational Flow: How smoothly work moves through the entire system, across teams and departments

Most productivity dashboards focus exclusively on the first while ignoring the second. This is like trying to optimize a car's engine performance while ignoring that it's stuck in a traffic jam. No amount of engine tuning will get you to your destination faster if systemic bottlenecks remain.

The SPACE Framework: A Better Approach

When designing productivity dashboards, I recommend using the SPACE framework developed by researchers at Microsoft, GitHub, and the University of Victoria. This holistic approach captures different dimensions of productivity and helps teams avoid the trap of focusing on a single metric.

SPACE stands for:

• Satisfaction: How fulfilled developers feel with their work, team, tools, or culture

• Performance: The outcome of a system or process

• Activity: A count of actions or outputs completed in the course of performing work

• Communication & Collaboration: How people and teams work together

• Efficiency & Flow: The ability to complete work with minimal interruptions or delays

  
  

What makes this framework powerful is its recognition that productivity is multidimensional. It acknowledges that developer satisfaction is just as important as output, and that collaboration patterns can be more revealing than raw activity metrics.

Finding the Molasses 

When productivity slows, the first instinct is often to ask, "How can teams work faster?" But the better question is, "What's slowing down the delivery engine?"

Organizations create drag in numerous ways that teams can't overcome on their own. Some common examples include:

• Big-batch planning: Committing to quarters of work without the ability to adapt

• Siloed teams: Creating handoff points that introduce delays and miscommunication

• Packed roadmaps: Starting more than teams can reasonably finish

• Context switching: Pulling teams in multiple directions simultaneously

• Invisible work: Failing to account for maintenance, tech debt, and support

• Excessive meetings: Often a symptom of high work-in-progress (WIP)

• Upstream lockdown: Detailed requirements that can't evolve with learning

None of these issues can be solved by having teams "be more efficient." They require organizational changes to remove systemic impediments.

Two Dashboards for Two Types of Flow

Given these distinct but interconnected aspects of productivity, I recommend developing two complementary types of dashboards:

1. Organizational Flow Dashboard

This high-level dashboard should contain a few key metrics that roll up across teams and provide a view of system-wide health. It’s important to include both throughput metrics and perception metrics:

Throughput metrics might include:

• Epic cycle time (from idea to delivery)

• Deployment frequency

• Change failure rate

• Lead time for changes

Perception metrics might include:

• Team satisfaction scores

• Perceived ability to influence decisions

• Assessment of cross-team collaboration

• Feeling of sustainable pace

The perception metrics are crucial because they often reveal issues before they appear in throughput data. Teams usually feel the molasses before it shows up in the numbers.

2. Team Flow Dashboard

At the team level, dashboards should be more detailed and customized to the specific context. These dashboards complement the organizational view by giving teams visibility into their own flow and the agency to improve it.

Team dashboards might include:

• Sprint predictability

• Amount of planned vs. unplanned work

• Code quality metrics

• Team-specific satisfaction and health metrics

• WIP limits 

What's important is that teams have autonomy to measure what matters most in their context, while still contributing to the organizational view.

Metrics as Conversation Starters

Perhaps the most important thing to remember about productivity dashboards is that all metrics are the start of a conversation, not the end of one.

When you see an unexpected trend, like increasing cycle times or decreasing team satisfaction, that's the moment to get curious and dig deeper.

For example, if epic cycle time is increasing, resist the urge to immediately attribute it to team inefficiency. Instead, ask questions like:

• Are teams taking on more complex work?

• Have dependencies increased?

• Is there more context switching happening?

• Has the discovery process changed?

• Are there new integration points causing delays?

This investigation could reveal organizational molasses that no amount of team optimization would overcome.

Beyond Productivity: Measuring Impact

Of course, even perfect flow doesn't guarantee success if we're building the wrong things. Productivity is only part of the picture.

A complete view of product delivery effectiveness must include impact metrics that help us understand if we're building the right thing at the right time. 

This connects back to our first article on decision-making frameworks—the decisions about what to build are just as important as how efficiently we build them.

Putting It All Together

The most effective organizations I've worked with approach productivity measurement with curiosity. They recognize that no single metric tells the whole story, and they're as interested in improving organizational flow as they are in optimizing team performance.

They create dashboards that:

1. Measure both team and organizational flow

2. Include both perception and throughput metrics

3. Serve as conversation starters, not judgment tools

4. Connect productivity to impact

5. Help identify and remove systemic bottlenecks

When leaders shift from asking "How can teams be more efficient?" to "How can we remove the molasses from our system?", remarkable improvements in both productivity and morale often follow.