Goodheart’s law states: “ When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure”
If your accounting is too fine grained, there becomes an inescapable draw to point at a metric and declare that a goal.
Once that happens, engineering tasks can be come extremely well defined to the point of acting like tunnel vision.
Instead of finding improvements or innovations generally, the focus is entirely on moving a specific metric.
You see this issue in highly metric driven orgs as well.
Goodheart’s law states: “ When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure”
If your accounting is too fine grained, there becomes an inescapable draw to point at a metric and declare that a goal.
Once that happens, engineering tasks can be come extremely well defined to the point of acting like tunnel vision.
Instead of finding improvements or innovations generally, the focus is entirely on moving a specific metric.
You see this issue in highly metric driven orgs as well.