I really wish this was taught more in business school: that metrics/productivity is subject to the Observer Effect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observer_effect_%28physics%29) too: that the act of observing for metrics will change the underlaying system.
If underperforming on your metrics will cause some pain, humans in general want to avoid pain, and you ARE employing smart people who are paid to solve problems and do analysis ... well, duh some metrics gaming will happen: people avoiding pain.
Probably this will have an opposite affect than what the measurer wanted: people hording things/information/output specifically to improve their metrics, people working around the metrics (outside the managed systems), or essentially spamming the system ("oh you found a bug in my you're reviewing? Can you file a new bug on this?... so my closed bug count for the week goes up...")
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I really wish this was taught more in business school: that metrics/productivity is subject to the Observer Effect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observer_effect_%28physics%29) too: that the act of observing for metrics will change the underlaying system.
If underperforming on your metrics will cause some pain, humans in general want to avoid pain, and you ARE employing smart people who are paid to solve problems and do analysis ... well, duh some metrics gaming will happen: people avoiding pain.
Probably this will have an opposite affect than what the measurer wanted: people hording things/information/output specifically to improve their metrics, people working around the metrics (outside the managed systems), or essentially spamming the system ("oh you found a bug in my you're reviewing? Can you file a new bug on this?... so my closed bug count for the week goes up...")