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What project management-oriented vanity metrics have you run across?

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Kiron Bondale Retired | Mentor| Retired Welland, Ontario, Canada
Vanity metrics are those which we believe will help us measure achievement of our goals, but end up creating unintended consequences such as having us optimize a part of a system at the cost of the whole, or focus on outputs rather than outcomes.

What are some of the vanity metrics you've encountered that are related to either project management or professional/personal development?

Here are a few to get the ball rolling:

- % Complete
- Cost variance (in isolation)
- Resource utilization
- Likes
- Number of credentials held by someone
- Number of people in one's social media network
- Velocity
- Defect counts
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Sante Delle-Vergini, PhD Senior Project Manager| Infosys Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- Cycle time
- WIP
- Job title
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Karan Shah Bangalore, Karnataka, India
Margin forecast!

If the costs spike up but the related revenue is not recognised yet - there are a lot (!) of questions to answer and a lot of people to pacify.
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Kiron Bondale Retired | Mentor| Retired Welland, Ontario, Canada
Karan - I like that one but would extend it to forecasts of all kinds. As Jerry Maguire would say - "Show me the MONEY!"
...
1 reply by Karan Shah
Apr 17, 2018 11:51 PM
Karan Shah
...
My usual refrain to that quote is, "Give me some TIME!"

:)
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Karan Shah Bangalore, Karnataka, India
Apr 17, 2018 8:51 AM
Replying to Kiron Bondale
...
Karan - I like that one but would extend it to forecasts of all kinds. As Jerry Maguire would say - "Show me the MONEY!"
My usual refrain to that quote is, "Give me some TIME!"

:)
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Michael Delaney Partner| Delaney Management LLC West Chester, Pa, United States
An interesting question. I like the description of vanity metrics which I see as items such as increase website hits, or increase lead generation or prototype development time. To be fair, i think the intent is often noble but a lack of effort to further defining the metric to a measure of true value is often the shortfall
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Kevin Drake Perth, Western Australia, Australia
Creating value added
Reducing unemployment
Positive impact on local society.

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