In my experience, if the business has a higher level decision that depends on the progress of a lower level team, the only working approach is for the manager i

In my experience, if the business has a higher level decision that depends on the progress of a lower level team, the only working approach is for the manager in charge of that decision to sit down with a person in the lower level team and discuss the state of things. A metric compresses a very rich and nuanced opportunity into a false dichotomy.