> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://help.swarmia.com/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://help.swarmia.com/features/metrics/key-metrics.md).
# Key metrics
## Overview
Improving how your engineering organization works is a long game. Whether you're trying to reduce cycle times, increase throughput, or improve deployment frequency, it helps to keep your north star metrics visible — rather than buried three clicks deep.
Key metrics lets you choose the indicators that matter most to your organization and surface them at the top of the Swarmia home page. Every time someone logs in, they see the same shared view of your company's engineering performance.
You can also open key metrics in a dedicated view, making it easy to see how your teams compare across the selected metrics.
## Choosing your key metrics
Admins can pick from a curated set of ready-made metrics, including:
* **Throughput:** PRs merged, PRs merged per FTE, stories completed, stories completed per FTE, issues completed, issues completed per FTE
* **Cycle time:** Pull request cycle time, story cycle time, issue cycle time
* **DORA metrics:** Deployment frequency, change lead time, change failure rate, and MTTR
* **Investment balance:** Share of effort spent on any of your investment categories
If none of those fit, you can also define your own key metrics using the same flexible reporting framework as [Explore](/features/metrics/explore.md). So whether your team cares most about a specific DORA metric, a code health indicator, or something entirely your own, you can surface it here.
## Defaults
You'll see a preselected set of key metrics the next time you log in to Swarmia:
* Average pull request cycle time
* PRs merged
* Stories completed
The default seed applies only to the data sources you've connected — code metrics require GitHub or GitLab, and issue metrics require Jira or Linear.
If you're an admin, you can edit the selection at any time to match what your organization actually cares about.
{% hint style="info" %}
Editing key metrics requires the **Manage key metrics** permission, which is granted to admins by default.
{% endhint %}
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