How many KPIs should an operations dashboard have?

Aim for 5 to 15. Below five, you are usually missing context — you can see one part of the operation but not enough to understand why a number moved. Above fifteen, no one can absorb the whole picture at a glance, and a dashboard you cannot read in a few seconds is a dashboard people stop reading. The right count sits in that band, weighted toward the low end when the audience is busy frontline managers and the high end when it is an ops leader reviewing the whole operation. The best filter is decision-density: for each KPI, ask when it last changed what someone did. If a metric has not driven a decision in a month, it is a candidate to demote off the main view and into a secondary report. It is also worth grouping the KPIs you keep — output, people, risk, and cost is a reliable structure — so the eye can scan by category instead of hunting through a flat list. The goal is not to show everything you measure; it is to show the few things that, seen together, tell you what to do next.