Goodhart's Law

Anthropologist Marilyn Strathern summarized Goodhart’s law most succinctly saying, “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.”

If a measure becomes a target, it creates incentive to hit the target. This perverse incentive leads to behaviors that can be counterproductive.

Links to this note

• One Pull Request Per Day

  Productive engineers should write one pull request per day. One pull request per day creates forward momentum. Forward momentum leads to progress. Progress is how teams overcomes their biggest challenges.