Vanity Metrics

An operational measurement that produces a positive reading without actually indicating that the underlying business activity it claims to measure is healthy. 

Vanity metrics are typically easy to improve in isolation (by changing the measurement methodology, the denominator, or the reporting period) without improving the actual operational performance they purport to represent.

The classic example is reporting “documents in our SOP library” as a process documentation metric when the relevant metric is “documents that have been reviewed in the last 12 months.”