Editing Performance indicator (section)

==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.<ref name=Daddis>{{cite book|last1=Daddis|first1=Gregory|title=No Sure Victory: Measuring U.S. Army Effectiveness and Progress in the Vietnam War|date=June 1, 2011|publisher=Oxford University Press, USA |isbn=978-0-19974-687-3}}</ref>

Key performance indicators can also lead to [[perverse incentive]]s 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.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Measuring and managing performance in organizations|last=Austin, Robert D. (Robert Daniel), 1962–|date=1996|publisher=Dorset House Publishing|others=DeMarco, Tom., Lister, Timothy R.|isbn=0932633366|location=New York|oclc=34798037}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|author=Martin Fowler |url=http://martinfowler.com/bliki/CannotMeasureProductivity.html |title=CannotMeasureProductivity |publisher=Martinfowler.com |date=2003-08-29 |access-date=2013-05-25}}</ref>

Sometimes, collecting statistics can become a substitute for a better understanding of the problems, so the use of dubious KPIs can result in progress in aims and measured effectiveness becoming different. For example, during the [[Vietnam War]], US soldiers were shown to be effective in kill ratios and high body counts, but this was misleading when used to measure aims as it did not show the lack of progress towards the US goal of increasing South Vietnamese government control of its territory.<ref name=Daddis/> Another example would be to measure the productivity of a software development team in terms of lines of source code written. This approach can easily add large amounts of dubious code, thereby inflating the line count but adding little value in terms of systemic improvement. A similar problem arises when a footballer kicks a ball uselessly to build up their statistics.