Practice
Key Metrics
What to track instead of velocity.
Instead of velocity, LDD practitioners track:
- Learning loop velocity: How many validated learning loops can you close per week?
- Learning-to-shipping ratio: What percentage of validated learning makes it to production?
- Time-to-validation: How fast can you close a learning loop from hypothesis to decision?
- Customer impact of validated learning: Of the learning you shipped, how much mattered to customers?
The goal isn't to maximize these metrics. It's to maintain healthy ratios. If you're validating fast but shipping slowly, something's wrong. If you're shipping a lot but validating little, you're drifting.
For solo builders, the most telling metric is simpler: what percentage of the things I built last month did I validate with a real user? If that number is low, you're vibe-coding. If it's high, you're learning.