When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."
— Goodhart’s Law
Example 1: Story points measure difficulty. But, if you set a target for story points completed per week, developers inflate their story point estimates to assure they hit the target.
— Goodhart’s Law
Example 1: Story points measure difficulty. But, if you set a target for story points completed per week, developers inflate their story point estimates to assure they hit the target.
Example 2: Tracking code coverage helps the team understand what code is tested. But if you target a certain code coverage percentage, developers game the system by writing useless tests.
Example 3: Burn down charts help estimate the completion date. But if you set a goal of burning down to zero every sprint, developers commit to less work in each sprint. And they avoid proposing any work that’s hard to estimate. This assures they can burn down to zero.
Summary: Measurement is useful. But avoid using measurements as targets.
When a measure becomes a target, it creates nasty unintended side-effects:
❌ We game the system.
❌ We over-optimize for the target.
❌ We focus on hitting the number instead of the real goal.
When a measure becomes a target, it creates nasty unintended side-effects:
❌ We game the system.
❌ We over-optimize for the target.
❌ We focus on hitting the number instead of the real goal.
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