“Therefore, you should be warned that this book, like all books, is biased and incomplete…”
-Â Donella H. Meadows, Thinking in Systems: A Primer
Judging just on the Note from the Author, I know I’m in for a treat!
When I first heard of the Godhart’s Law it resonated with me, as I believe it did with many people, because it describes a common pain developers feel. However, the more I thought about it, the more I realised that that’s all it does - describes the problem. It doesn’t in anyway help you identify the core issue, nor solve it in any way. That’s why when I ran into this article I was glad that someone else felt the same way and even provided a more useful formulation:
When people are pressured to meet a target value there are three ways they can proceed:
- They can work to improve the system
- They can distort the system
- Or they can distort the data
Thanks, Cedric Chin!