In my experience metrics make no difference on success, the dynamics of the team and the workflow have been set up for success or failure before you started measuring it. Metrics should never be a target, once a measure becomes a target it ceases to be a good measure.
Measures should be used to give you awareness of time and quantity. Quality as efficiency is inaccurate, it ignores the properties of the work created. Being aware of time and quantity gives managers of large empires the ability to summarize the work of many individuals into a few measures. This kills the point of individually excelling and creates the grounds for union largess. In a few years everybody realizes that the work is not created equal and you create an incentive for real quality minded people to started ranking everybody and allowing room for clearing the bottom 10%.
The same ideas in the article are pushed across youtube, across HN and the internet culture at large, in time with each other. It's disappointing to see so many smart people walk in mental lock step with one another. It devalues the individual contribution and shows there is little left for the majority of these content creators to say that hasn't been said elsewhere.
I agree that the dynamics of a dev team are extremely important. But how can one drive to get better without understanding their current status?
In my personal experience, there should be an open conversation between the team on deciding what to measure and what does the team want to improve on even if the team already has good dynamics. My moral as a developer was always up when my team got props for something, because I was a part of that success.
I think the focus needs to be on the team as a whole, instead of getting dragged into a comparisons game. The developers should be aware that this isn't an individuals race.
If you work in a large organization then you will still be measured even if you're team doesn't take the measurements on their own. Good metrics can only benefit you since you can control the conversation with your own data instead of data from a corporate figure that only looks at you as another row in their spreadsheet.
The individual seeing with metrics is not the action taking mind. The person who sees through metrics is a heart hidden behind a corporate body. The heart cannot imagine greater heights, it can only regulate flow. Blood pressure spikes get eliminated for "normality".
This lack of thought and focus on flow eliminates morals and devalues changing forms and structures in favour of a mindless gigantism. Corporations don't change individuals, they lump responsibility for failure upon me's and you's. The corporation's goal is to grow the flow at human cost. I among many would prefer not become one of Howard's humanoids (Network 1976) and would instead prefer to go out on the stage of individual achievement, if at all. We are all vulnerable to the snakes that encircle and poison hearts. Ideas go in one side of the heart and come out the other side dead.
Although recently, I've noticed another reason to tread lightly with metrics: Metrics have become a highly-charged topic among developers who consume a lot of Twitter, Reddit, HN and other developer chatter. The cynical response to any metrics tracking program is to claim that they will be gamed, or abused, or misused by management. Once your team has adopted this cynical mindset, they're unlikely to see metrics any other way, so they get to work gaming and abusing the system.
In my experience, getting as much team buy-in as possible is the key to making metrics a success. It's healthy to invite the teams to an open discussion about what metrics they think should be tracked. Give them an opportunity to openly discuss objections, and make a valid effort to acknowledge and work with their suggestions as you develop your metrics program. Ideally, you would find one or two metrics that benefit the team members directly rather than the company or management.
It's important that developers can see the metrics as an open target to help them excel within the company, rather than a punitive measure or something that management can use as a substitute for real engagement. When team metrics decline, use that opportunity to open a discussion with the team. If you let metrics become a punitive measure or a guide for who gets promoted or fired, they will absolutely be gamed to death.