Leading indicator
A leading indicator is a measurable signal that provides early evidence about a likely later outcome, condition, or performance.
Effective Platform Engineering
A leading indicator is a measure that provides early evidence about the likelihood of a later outcome.
- How it is used
- Uses early operational evidence to improve platform performance before later delivery or reliability outcomes appear.
- How deep it goes
- Defines the signal and gives metric examples, but stops short of specifying a complete measurement implementation.
- Examples
- Uses automated-deployment percentage, team deployment frequency, pipeline-stage time, code-quality violations, test coverage, and manual-test ratio.
- What you can do after
- Diagnose bottlenecks and quality risks early, then target automation or pipeline improvements before production outcomes deteriorate.
Read how Effective Platform Engineering explains leading indicator →
Demand Forecasting Best Practices
A leading indicator is a variable whose current or earlier movement provides information about a later outcome such as future demand.
- How it is used
- Supports demand forecasting by supplying earlier signals of later demand.
- How deep it goes
- Defines delayed demand signals and illustrates them with permits, order books, and a six-month lag.
- Examples
- Uses processed building permits, business order books, preorders, and a six-month lag between indicator and demand.
- What you can do after
- Evaluate/understand it by identifying observable signals that precede demand over a useful forecasting horizon.
Read how Demand Forecasting Best Practices explains leading indicator →
Related concepts
- code coverageincludes · Code coverage measures the extent to which a test suite exercises a program’s code elements, execution paths, or behaviors.
- metrickind of · A metric is a quantitative measure used to characterize or assess a property, condition, behavior, performance, or outcome.
These guides are generated from the text of Manning books by Manning's knowledge graph and link to the sections they draw on. The full books are available on liveBook and at manning.com.