Business Context

FreshCart is a same-day grocery delivery app used by 2.4M monthly customers across 18 cities. The COO wants a new executive operations dashboard because teams currently track 40+ metrics, and leaders are reacting to noisy changes instead of focusing on the few measures that best reflect customer experience and operational health.

Metric Scenario

Last month, FreshCart generated 1.1M orders, with on-time delivery falling from 94.2% to 91.1%, average picker-to-door time rising from 42 to 49 minutes, order cancellation rate increasing from 2.8% to 4.1%, and customer support contacts per 1,000 orders rising from 38 to 52. At the same time, daily active customers were flat at 410K and gross order value grew 6% month over month. The COO asks you to decide which operational metrics should appear on the top-level dashboard, which should be supporting drill-down metrics, and how to make the dashboard intuitive for executives who need to diagnose issues quickly.

Requirements

1. Define the 5-7 most important operational metrics for the executive dashboard and explain why each belongs there.
2. Separate north-star, primary KPI, leading, lagging, and guardrail metrics.
3. Propose a metric hierarchy showing which metrics should be top-level vs drill-down only.
4. Explain how you would avoid redundant or misleading metrics.
5. Identify how you would segment the dashboard to isolate operational issues quickly.

Data Available

• orders: order_id, customer_id, city, store_id, created_at, promised_delivery_time, delivered_at, order_value, order_status
• fulfillment_events: order_id, picker_assigned_at, picking_started_at, packed_at, courier_assigned_at, courier_pickup_at
• support_tickets: ticket_id, order_id, created_at, issue_type, resolution_time
• app_sessions: customer_id, session_date, orders_placed, app_version
• store_capacity: store_id, date, scheduled_picker_hours, scheduled_courier_hours, order_capacity