Diagnosing Dysfunctional Metrics

Jim Highsmith is co-author of the Agile Manifesto with 60 years of experience as an IT manager, product manager, project manager, consultant, software developer, and agile pioneer.

  Agile   Leadership  

This is Part 3 of The Project Success Rewired series:

Part 1: When the Old Metrics Fail You
Problem framing and the origin of measurement tension

Part 2: Measuring What Matters Next
Capability Metrics in the Age of Uncertainty

Scene 1 – The Uneasy Win
Arin leaned back in her chair, scanning the pilot report spread across her desk.

On paper, the numbers looked great. The capability metrics they’d introduced in one division—measures designed to gauge an organization’s ability to keep delivering value—were holding steady, and even the skeptics had gone quiet.

But her gut wasn’t celebrating.

Buried in the feedback were worrying signs: side conversations about “what the execs really want to see,” team leads quietly trimming messier indicators, portfolio reviews drifting toward performance dashboards instead of the new capability signals.

She’d seen this movie before—the slow migration from honest signals to polished theater. Rob Austin’s warning played in her head:

“Reliance on simple measurements in complex situations nearly always leads to dysfunction.”

The numbers weren’t the problem. The culture was.

Scene 2 – The Dysfunction Spectrum
Two days later, at The Compass Bean, Arin met her core team—Jordan, the delivery director; Ethan, the enterprise …

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