4 March 2026
Quarterly metric reviews that do not become theatre
Theatre is a pack that changed on Wednesday night so Thursday’s story would land. Review Room Practice exists because that habit is common in GB product orgs, not because people are dishonest. They are scared of a flat line.
Forty-five minutes is a policy
Longer meetings invite feature pitches. We use a fixed agenda: freeze status, exceptions since last time, one contested request, dissent recorded by name. If you need two hours, you have too many tiles in the room. That is a Dashboard Amnesty problem, not a facilitation problem.
The freeze log
A freeze is not a vow of silence. It is a list of what may not change without an addendum. Windows, exclusions, and the identity of the owner belong on that list. Colour palettes do not. We have seen teams freeze the wrong things and then break the charter to “just fix the legend.”
Last-minute denominators
If the denominator moves after the second Tuesday of the month, the quarter’s comparison is a new metric wearing the old name. Say so in the minutes. Do not hide it in a footnote with 8-point type.
Finance partners in Manchester and Edinburgh tend to respect a boring log. They do not respect a surprise. Our job as teachers is to make the log boring enough that surprise becomes the expensive option.