Metrics as Organizational Currency?
When metrics determine how projects are perceived, how teams are evaluated, and how success is communicated upward, people naturally learn how to optimize them.
Then something strange can happen:
Every metric gets better, but the customer barely notices.
Velocity goes up. Code coverage goes up. More tests are automated. More tickets are closed. More code is shipped. Developer productivity scores improve.
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None of these are inherently bad metrics. They can all tell us something useful.
But they are signals, not outcomes.
If customers are still experiencing the same crashes, latency, outages, friction, and frustration, did we actually get better?
Measure what matters, but keep asking whether what you’re measuring actually matters.
Thank you for reading this short post. Keep geeking out!
Almir Mustafic
