Metrics that backfire
On This Lesson 4 topics
This lesson is planned. The outline below lists the topics it will cover. The full lesson has not been published yet.
In this lesson
recognize and avoid Goodhart effects.
Planned topics
- Goodhart's law: when a measure becomes a target, it stops being a good measure.
- Common backfires: counting lines or commits, ranking teams by deployment frequency, rewarding closed tickets.
- Symptoms of gaming: tiny meaningless deploys, reclassifying failures, splitting work to lower cycle time.
- Reduce risk: measure at team or program level, use several metrics, discuss trends not targets, and review definitions.
Draft outline details
Demonstration
Table: metric | how it gets gamed | counter-measure. Example: deployment frequency | empty releases | pair with change size and failure rate.
Check your understanding
Why avoid comparing teams by one metric?
Show answer
Teams have different contexts, and the metric then invites gaming.
Practice
Apply this lesson with the module's lab, exercises and quiz.
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