Metrics Mania. Obsession with Measurement can Harm our Teams
summary
Argues that standard measures—velocity, cycle time, MTTR and OKRs—often backfire by changing behavior: examples include an NHS 18 week/92nd percentile gaming, schools teaching to a 65% test, a monthly happiness checker score that gets inflated, a redevelopment rate that sparks dev–QA blame, and a build break hall of shame that causes batch checkins. Recommends trust, bottom‑up metrics, trend tracking, a balance scorecard, qualitative measures like NPS, and retiring metrics that stop producing useful change.
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chapters (12)
- 0:00Introduction to metrics obsession
- 2:10Why metrics are so popular
- 4:57Public sector metric failures
- 7:49How metrics drive behavior
- 8:52Software team metric examples
- 12:23Narrow focus and metric tensions
- 13:07Hanoi rat tail experiment
- 14:55Right metrics vs no metrics
- 15:58Using metrics wisely
- 18:25Balanced scorecard approach
- 19:29Qualitative metrics over numbers
- 21:37Q&A on metrics misuse
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