06/08Common Blocker

Vanity Metrics

Dashboards That Don't Tell the Truth

Your Metrics Are Lying to You.

You have dashboards. They show velocity is up, story points are green, burndown looks good. But customers are still frustrated, releases still slip, and teams are still struggling. The metrics say success while reality says failure. Nobody trusts the numbers anymore.

Show Me the Fix Sound Familiar?

Does This Sound Like You?

Velocity is up but delivery hasn't actually improved
Teams game metrics to hit targets that don't matter
Executives can't answer "are we getting better?"
Team metrics and business results aren't connected

Keep reading

The Symptoms

You're Not Imagining It

If any of these sound familiar, you've found the right place.

Velocity is up but delivery hasn't actually improved

Teams game metrics to hit targets that don't matter

Executives can't answer "are we getting better?"

Team metrics and business results aren't connected

Measuring outputs (features shipped) not outcomes (customer value)

Teams stopped taking metrics seriously. Everyone knows they're theater

Root Cause

Why Metrics Become Useless

Goodhart's Law: when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. The moment you incentivize velocity, teams inflate story points. The moment you measure features shipped, teams ship small features. The metric moves while the reality doesn't.

Vanity metrics tell you what you want to hear, not what you need to know. Story points completed, burndown charts, feature counts. They're easy to make green and meaningless for decision-making.

The deeper problem: most organizations measure activity instead of outcomes. You know how busy teams are but not whether that busyness creates business value.

The Data

This Is Common

80%

of features are rarely or never used, but they counted as deliveredSource: Standish Group

73%

of executives don't trust their organization's dataSource: KPMG

90%

of organizations measure outputs, not outcomesSource: Industry surveys

The Solution

Metrics That Actually Tell You Something

Replace misleading vanity metrics with actionable data that drives real decisions.

Know whether you're actually improving (not just feeling busy)

Connect what teams do to business results

Identify problems before they become crises

Make decisions based on evidence, not opinion

Our Approach

How We Build Metrics That Matter

We implement outcome-based measurement that connects team activity to business results.

Define Real Outcomes

What does success actually look like? We identify the business outcomes that matter: customer satisfaction, time to market, quality, predictability. Real outcomes, not proxy measures.

Result: Clear definition of what success means

Connect Daily Work to Business Results

We show how what teams do every day connects to what the business cares about. Path to Agility provides the framework: practices lead to capabilities, capabilities drive outcomes.

Result: Clear connection between team activity and business results

Build Honest Dashboards

We implement metrics that can't be easily gamed and that provide actionable insights. Leading indicators that predict problems before they hit. Trailing indicators that confirm progress.

Result: Dashboards executives and teams both trust

Use Data to Get Better

Metrics aren't for judging. They're for learning. We build habits of looking at the numbers, spotting problems, trying fixes, and checking if they worked.

Result: Teams that use data to improve, not just report

Results

What Happens When Metrics Tell the Truth

Executives can finally answer "are we improving?"

Leaders get data they actually trust. No more gut feel or cherry-picked stats. Real answers to real questions.

"The Path to Agility was crucial to our journey because it focused on outcomes, strengthened our capabilities, and became an integral part of our improvement mindset." - Jeanette Ward, CEO, Texas Mutual Insurance

People stop inflating numbers

When you measure customer outcomes instead of story points, there's nothing to game. Teams focus on actual results.

You see problems before they blow up

Good metrics warn you when something's going wrong, before customers complain or deadlines slip. Time to fix, not scramble.

Progress becomes undeniable

When metrics are honest, improvement shows up in the numbers. Hard to argue with data that everyone trusts.

We've Solved This Before

See How We Fixed It

Real organizations that overcame this challenge with our help.

Success Story

Aviation

Southwest Tech Ops

Tech Ops Technology, managing 55 critical applications for aircraft readiness and safety, transformed 300+ team members using SAFe and Path to Agility to dramatically improve predictability and delivery.

67.3% to 105%Predictability

Read Full Story

Success Story

Financial Services

Information Security Team

An Information Security team transformed from reactive fire-fighting mode to predictable strategic delivery through Kanban and capacity-based planning.