You do, however, have to be very careful that the "it" that is being improved is really the same as the "it" that's being measured. I've lost count of the times that I've seen a well intended metric end up driving exactly the wrong sort of behaviour.
(For example: I recently sat through an excellent lunch time rant from somebody whose boss is prioritising shorter simple-to-implement stories over longer ones with a higher business value, because their team is having their efficiency judged by the cycle time (length of time between story-in and story-out)).
You do, however, have to be very careful that the "it" that is being improved is really the same as the "it" that's being measured. I've lost count of the times that I've seen a well intended metric end up driving exactly the wrong sort of behaviour.
(For example: I recently sat through an excellent lunch time rant from somebody whose boss is prioritising shorter simple-to-implement stories over longer ones with a higher business value, because their team is having their efficiency judged by the cycle time (length of time between story-in and story-out)).