Jim Shore writes about productivity metrics for software development, concluding that dollars per time is the only objective measure of productivity he's found.

He's quite right in that the CEO nor the shareholders really care about whether your software project was delivered on time. They care about the project's influence on the bottom line and share price. The problem is, of course, that some CEO's, some CTO's, some middle managers, and some whatevermanagersyouhave, are in fact more interested about timely delivery, exact fulfillment of a requirement specification, and so forth--even if it would be better for the company to actually ship the product a month later, ship it with a slightly different set of features than was laid down in the spec, or perhaps even cancel the project entirely. CYA is the reality in the majority of corporate world, even if it need not be.

The problem of misaligned priorities between top management, the grass roots, and everything in between is a real one. I'm afraid that aligning those priorities would require more trust, less selfishness, and more common sense than most established corporations can afford.