The unavoidable metric
The only number that matters is what would still happen if Zach did not show up tomorrow.
A dashboard can look autonomous while the company is still waiting for one person to move.
Role replacement makes the architecture emotionally legible. It turns ambition into a board-level question: which responsibilities have left the human mechanism, and which are still held by force of habit?
Progress is reported as artifacts: docs, PRs, projections, and plans.
Progress is reported as responsibilities removed from the human role, backed by receipts and visible in the product.