The more direct control people have of a metric, the more likely it is to be gamed. Some metrics are almost guaranteed to be meaningless and unproductive: bug c

The more direct control people have of a metric, the more likely it is to be gamed. Some metrics are almost guaranteed to be meaningless and unproductive: bug counts (open/closed), lines of code, closed tickets. Other metrics are informative, but game-able: fuel efficiency, crash tests. Other metrics are expensive and potentially confusing: customer satisfaction, number of automotive deaths, CO2 levels, pollution levels. If you are measuring a game-able metric, you should probably also measure a higher level metric and make sure that they are both heading in the same direction. Obviously this is expensive and complicated to figure out.