What is NOT an example of a business performance metric?

Business performance metrics evaluate the financial, commercial, and strategic success of an organization as a whole. Standard business performance metrics include financial earnings, cash flow, profit margins, and market share. In contrast, "epics delivered" is an operational velocity or output metric used in Agile project management to measure delivery capacity and work throughput. While completing epics contributes to business goals, the metric itself measures activity rather than financial performance or market success. DevOps encourages aligning operational metrics like epics delivered with true business performance metrics to ensure technical outputs generate tangible organizational value and business outcomes.

Option A: Earnings reflect net income and financial profitability, serving as a fundamental metric for evaluating organizational business performance.
Option B: Cashflow measures net currency movement into and out of a business, directly indicating financial liquidity and operational health.
Option D: Market share indicates an organization's portion of total sales within a market, serving as a primary metric of competitive business standing.

Kaplan, R. S., & Norton, D. P. (1996). The Balanced Scorecard: Translating Strategy into Action. Harvard Business Review Press, Chapter 2: "Financial Perspective," pp. 47–68.

Forsgren, N., Humble, J., & Kim, G. (2018). Accelerate: The Science of Lean Software and DevOps. IT Revolution, Chapter 2: "Measuring Performance," pp. 11–24.

ISO/IEC/IEEE 15939:2017. Systems and software engineering — Measurement process, International Organization for Standardization, Section 5: "Measurement Framework," https://doi.org/10.1109/IEEESTD.2017.7912443.