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"When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure" Unless, of course, the measure was good to begin with - such as cash or bars of gold. The pro

"When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure" Unless, of course, the measure was good to begin with - such as cash or bars of gold. The problem with most measurable measures in software is they are gameable proxy-non-grata. The whole thing depends on being able to compute the net present value of a patch on a given code base. Then pay the developer/team some percentage of this. What a beautiful reality that would be for developers and businesses alike. To bad there is no conceivable way to do it. I'd guess computing this is 1E12X harder than protein folding.

goodlinks 4y ago
"Unless, of course, the measure was good to begin with - such as cash or bars of gold." IMHO this is a bad measure, its how you end up poluting oand poisoning etc. fro profit no?
- _hl_ 4y ago
  That's because these are also just proxy metrics for "net value provided to society", and heavily distorted at that.
- devinrhode2 4y ago
  I'd say highlighting environmental issues doesn't make it a bad metric It highlights missing rules/regulations
- osigurdson 4y ago
  Gosh, what a tangential poke - gold bad because cyanide, argument invalid because said gold. Fine, exclude gold from the argument and just use cash / e-transfer.
kstenerud 4y ago
> Unless, of course, the measure was good to begin with - such as cash or bars of gold. Unfortunately, this often leads to corporate shortsightedness (e.g. "This will destroy our customer goodwill and eliminate our competitiveness in the coming decade, but it will make our quarterly revenue targets and our jobs depend on that, so we're doing it.")
- osigurdson 4y ago
  I did say "net present value" - cash or bars of gold which represent the NPV of a pull request/patch.
  - kstenerud 4y ago
    Which, once again introduces a perverse incentive to produce a high local value contribution that hurts the long term good, over a lower present value contribution that promotes a better long term result. Any metric you set for comparing contributions, no matter how good you think it is, WILL produce a cobra effect. This is because metrics are a model, which by definition can't capture the entirety of reality, and so any attempt to enforce based on that model is doomed to failure. How much would you value a maintenance task? Or a process change? A better air conditioning system? Game night to let off steam and improve morale? How do you calculate what its long term worth is from the productivity change in order to assign a present value to that contributor? How can you even know what kind of an effect it will have long term? You'd need a pretty damn sophisticated model, and even then it would still only be a model, missing many points of the reality hurtling towards you at the speed of light. And meanwhile, the little things that improve long term prospects simply aren't done, because the metric doesn't value them. Thus, metrics, even NPV, cash, bars of gold, are bad policy enforcement vehicles.
    - osigurdson 4y ago
      No, because the NPV includes all cash flows (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_present_value https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_present_value). I completely agree with you that it is probably impossible to compute (per my original comment). But at least understanding what the target is helps imo.
      - kstenerud 4y ago
        Using metrics to gauge how well the enterprise is doing on the whole and to influence policy decisions and strategy is absolutely good and desirable. It's only when metrics become rules or quotas or measures to compare people or departments as a policy that things go bad.

goodlinks 4y ago

"Unless, of course, the measure was good to begin with - such as cash or bars of gold." IMHO this is a bad measure, its how you end up poluting oand poisoning etc. fro profit no?

_hl_ 4y ago
That's because these are also just proxy metrics for "net value provided to society", and heavily distorted at that.
devinrhode2 4y ago
I'd say highlighting environmental issues doesn't make it a bad metric It highlights missing rules/regulations
osigurdson 4y ago
Gosh, what a tangential poke - gold bad because cyanide, argument invalid because said gold. Fine, exclude gold from the argument and just use cash / e-transfer.

kstenerud 4y ago

> Unless, of course, the measure was good to begin with - such as cash or bars of gold. Unfortunately, this often leads to corporate shortsightedness (e.g. "This will destroy our customer goodwill and eliminate our competitiveness in the coming decade, but it will make our quarterly revenue targets and our jobs depend on that, so we're doing it.")

osigurdson 4y ago
I did say "net present value" - cash or bars of gold which represent the NPV of a pull request/patch.
- kstenerud 4y ago
  Which, once again introduces a perverse incentive to produce a high local value contribution that hurts the long term good, over a lower present value contribution that promotes a better long term result. Any metric you set for comparing contributions, no matter how good you think it is, WILL produce a cobra effect. This is because metrics are a model, which by definition can't capture the entirety of reality, and so any attempt to enforce based on that model is doomed to failure. How much would you value a maintenance task? Or a process change? A better air conditioning system? Game night to let off steam and improve morale? How do you calculate what its long term worth is from the productivity change in order to assign a present value to that contributor? How can you even know what kind of an effect it will have long term? You'd need a pretty damn sophisticated model, and even then it would still only be a model, missing many points of the reality hurtling towards you at the speed of light. And meanwhile, the little things that improve long term prospects simply aren't done, because the metric doesn't value them. Thus, metrics, even NPV, cash, bars of gold, are bad policy enforcement vehicles.
  - osigurdson 4y ago
    No, because the NPV includes all cash flows (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_present_value https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_present_value). I completely agree with you that it is probably impossible to compute (per my original comment). But at least understanding what the target is helps imo.
    - kstenerud 4y ago
      Using metrics to gauge how well the enterprise is doing on the whole and to influence policy decisions and strategy is absolutely good and desirable. It's only when metrics become rules or quotas or measures to compare people or departments as a policy that things go bad.