# Lagging indicators
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*Lagging indicators* confirm whether the effort is paying off. Fewer production incidents, faster recovery times, and reduced customer impact are the outcomes that justify the investment.

## Incident reduction metrics
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These metrics show whether proactive risk management is translating into fewer and less severe production incidents.

### Production incident frequency
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+ **Definition**: Number of production incidents per month
+ **Target**: 20% reduction within 6 months of FMEA implementation
+ **Measurement**: Count of production incidents from monitoring systems
+ **Frequency**: Monthly tracking with quarterly trend analysis

### Preventable incident rate
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+ **Definition**: Percentage of incidents that were identified as risks in FMEA analysis
+ **Target**: Increase to 60% of incidents having been pre-identified as risks
+ **Calculation**: (Incidents matching FMEA risks / Total incidents) × 100
+ **Frequency**: Monthly analysis of incident correlation

### Critical incident reduction
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+ **Definition**: Number of severity 1/2 incidents per quarter
+ **Target**: 30% reduction within 12 months
+ **Measurement**: Count of high-severity incidents from incident management system
+ **Frequency**: Quarterly tracking and trending

## Recovery and response metrics
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These metrics measure how quickly your team detects and resolves incidents when they do occur.

### Mean time to recovery (MTTR)
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+ **Definition**: Average time to restore service after incident
+ **Target**: 15% improvement within 6 months
+ **Measurement**: Time from incident start to resolution
+ **Frequency**: Monthly calculation, quarterly trending

### Mean time to detection (MTTD)
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+ **Definition**: Average time to detect incidents after occurrence
+ **Target**: 25% improvement through enhanced monitoring from FMEA
+ **Measurement**: Time from incident occurrence to detection
+ **Frequency**: Monthly calculation, quarterly trending

### First-time fix rate
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+ **Definition**: Percentage of incidents resolved without recurrence within 30 days
+ **Target**: 10% improvement through better root cause understanding
+ **Calculation**: (Incidents with no recurrence / Total resolved incidents) × 100
+ **Frequency**: Monthly tracking with 30-day lag

## Customer impact metrics
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These metrics capture how effectively FMEA is protecting the end-user experience from service disruptions.

### Customer-affecting incidents
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+ **Definition**: Number of incidents that impact customer experience
+ **Target**: 25% reduction within 9 months
+ **Measurement**: Count of incidents with customer impact classification
+ **Frequency**: Monthly tracking, quarterly business review

### Service availability
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+ **Definition**: Percentage uptime of critical application services
+ **Target**: Maintain or improve existing SLA commitments
+ **Calculation**: (Total uptime / Total time) × 100
+ **Frequency**: Real-time monitoring, monthly reporting

### Customer satisfaction impact
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+ **Definition**: Customer satisfaction scores related to service reliability
+ **Target**: Maintain or improve baseline scores
+ **Measurement**: Customer survey responses and support ticket sentiment
+ **Frequency**: Quarterly assessment