Problems
In practice, overseeing key performance indicators can prove expensive or difficult for organizations. Some indicators such as staff morale may be impossible to quantify. As such dubious KPIs can be adopted that can be used as a rough guide rather than a precise benchmark.
Another serious issue in practice is that once a measure is created, it becomes difficult to adjust to changing needs as historical comparisons will be lost. As such measures are kept even if of dubious relevance, because history does exist.
Comparisons between different organizations are often difficult as they depend on specific in-house practices and policies.
Key performance indicators can also lead to perverse incentives and unintended consequences as a result of employees working to the specific measurements at the expense of the actual quality or value of their work. For example, measuring the productivity of a software development team in terms of source lines of code encourages copy and paste code and over-engineered design, leading to bloated code bases that are particularly difficult to maintain, understand and modify.
Read more about this topic: Performance Indicator
Famous quotes containing the word problems:
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—Lawrence Kutner (20th century)
“I had many problems in my conduct of the office being contrasted with President Kennedy’s conduct in the office, with my manner of dealing with things and his manner, with my accent and his accent, with my background and his background. He was a great public hero, and anything I did that someone didn’t approve of, they would always feel that President Kennedy wouldn’t have done that.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
“Our [adult] children have an adult’s right to make their own choices and have the responsibility of living with the consequences. If we make their problems ours, they avoid that responsibility, and we are faced with problems we can’t and shouldn’t solve.”
—Jane Adams (20th century)