Re:Startup idea list
by iamwil on Tuesday September 18, 2007 @10:18AM
(#56286)
I think it's both Joe Krause and Max Levin that both quote the HP founder that, "You make what you measure"
The problem is that sometimes it's not obvious what you measure, since what you might be interested is something vague like "effectiveness" or "progress". And, like all pattern classification problems, if you pick features that don't give a good signal to noise ratio, your assessment could be way off.
Even worse when that being measured knows what's being measured. A feedback loop, if you will. And thus, the fact that you observed something changes it, which sways the results from if you didn't measure it. Sounds a little bit like photons in physics, but I'm guessing photons work off of different principles.
Joel is merely saying that you should be careful of what you measure, because some metrics (lines of code, hours work) aren't indicative of what you're really trying to figure out (progress, effectiveness).
The problem is that sometimes it's not obvious what you measure, since what you might be interested is something vague like "effectiveness" or "progress". And, like all pattern classification problems, if you pick features that don't give a good signal to noise ratio, your assessment could be way off.
Even worse when that being measured knows what's being measured. A feedback loop, if you will. And thus, the fact that you observed something changes it, which sways the results from if you didn't measure it. Sounds a little bit like photons in physics, but I'm guessing photons work off of different principles.
Joel is merely saying that you should be careful of what you measure, because some metrics (lines of code, hours work) aren't indicative of what you're really trying to figure out (progress, effectiveness).