Goals & Metrics

Goals & Metrics is Q's special page for tracking outcomes. It gives you one place to define what success means, record progress manually, and preserve historical targets across archived periods.

Use it when you want to answer questions like:

• What are the few outcomes that matter right now?
• Are we improving key metrics or just shipping work?
• Which goals belong to growth, revenue, product, or financial health?
• What changed this quarter compared to the last one?

Core Concepts

Areas

Areas are durable buckets for grouping goals. Q starts with a few built-in areas:

• Growth
• Revenue
• Product
• Financial

You can add more custom areas if your project needs them.

Periods

Periods are optional OKR-like cycles such as Q2 2026, Launch Month, or Post-beta.

Important rules:

• Goals can live inside a period or exist without one.
• Periods are archived, not deleted.
• Archived periods stay available so Q and external tools can reference historical targets later.

Goal Types

Goals & Metrics supports three goal types plus one special metric mode:

Goals vs Metrics

This distinction matters:

• A goal has a target and gets a status badge
• A metric has no target and gets no status badge

Instead of status, metrics show a trend:

• Up
• Down
• Flat

This keeps targetless tracking from looking artificially "behind" or "not started."

Status Calculation

Q uses two modes for goal status.

Deadline-aware mode

If a goal has a deadline, Q compares actual progress to expected pace over time.

This means:

• completed when progress reaches 100%
• on_track when progress is at or above expected pace
• at_risk when progress is slightly behind pace
• behind when progress is materially behind pace

Fallback mode

If no deadline exists, Q falls back to static thresholds:

• completed at 100%+
• on_track at 60%+
• at_risk at 30%+
• behind below 30%

Boolean goals are simpler:

• completed if checked
• not started otherwise

Working With Numeric Goals

Numeric goals track:

• current value
• optional target value
• unit
• optional deadline

Examples:

• 42 / 100 signups
• 18 / 25 paid users
• 7% / 12% conversion

If you remove the target, the item becomes a metric.

Working With Milestone Goals

Milestone goals are useful when the result is best represented as a checklist rather than a single number.

Examples:

• Launch checklist
• Security review
• Beta readiness

Progress is calculated as completed steps / total steps.

Filters

The toolbar supports filtering by:

• period
• area
• kind (all, goals, metrics)

This makes it easy to focus on:

• only current-period goals
• only growth-related outcomes
• only metrics without targets

Manual Updates

For now, values are updated manually:

• numeric goals: set the latest current value
• boolean goals: mark done or undone
• milestone goals: check completed steps

Every update is added to the page history data so trends can be derived for metrics.

Future Webhooks

The current version is manual-first, but the data model is prepared for later webhook-based updates from systems like:

• analytics tools
• billing systems
• custom backend events

That future integration is meant to update values automatically while keeping the same Goals & Metrics UI.

Best Practices

• Keep the number of active goals small.
• Separate goals from metrics on purpose.
• Use periods when you want a time-boxed cycle.
• Leave some goals outside periods if they are evergreen.
• Archive periods instead of deleting them.
• Prefer milestone goals when success depends on several named steps.

Related Features

• Mission Boards for execution
• Growth Lab for experiments and channel learning
• Page Manager for adding and managing the page