People look at the wrong things:
– Things that are easy to measure but meaningless
– “Checking boxes” rather than results
– Few, if any, qualitative measures
And present them in the wrong way:
– Confusing and contradictory data
– Meaningful only to specialists – and maybe not even to them!
– Unclear purpose
– Point data and not trends
– Hard to understand and use to make decisions
To close the gap, how well you are doing needs to be measured in business terms

He suggested looking at metrics that help see if we are delivering better applications, delivering faster, systems that are easier to use, cheaper to run, and leading to happier users.  These are not single dimension views but they focus on what matters.  IBM is adding a number of capabilities for improved metrics to its Team Concert ALM product (as are other ALM vendors) and while these tools do provide increased reporting capabilities it will be important to not misuse the information and to recognize that seeing bad numbers doesn’t mean seeing "bad people".  This is the real core of the use of metrics is while they may be the proverbial warning flag they don’t tell you directly how to fix the problem.  This doesn’t mean all dashboards are evil but they can’t replace Management by Walking Around and getting your hands dirty.