The famous dictum says that what gets measured gets managed. But there is a darker corollary that product teams experience daily: what gets measured also gets gamed. The moment a metric becomes a target, the behaviour it was designed to measure changes. Teams optimise for the number rather than the outcome the number was supposed to represent.
At PR_D_CT DAY 2025 in Louvain-la-Neuve, Busra Coskuner, a trainer and consultant specialising in product management practices, delivered a talk that exposed the gamification dynamics hiding inside every product organisation's metrics dashboard. Drawing from her experience working with product teams across Europe, Busra presented a compelling analysis of how well-intentioned measurement systems produce perverse incentives.
The talk was both entertaining and sobering. Many in the audience recognised their own metrics in Busra's examples and left with a commitment to rethink how they measure product success.
Original Presentation Slides
Download the slides from this talk as presented at the gathering.