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Software people are intensely susceptible to the McNamara Fallacy:

“But when the McNamara discipline is applied too literally, the first step is to measure whatever can be easily measured. The second step is to disregard that which can't easily be measured or given a quantitative value. The third step is to presume that what can't be measured easily really isn't important. The fourth step is to say that what can't be easily measured really doesn't exist. This is suicide.”

— Daniel Yankelovich, "Interpreting the New Life Styles", Sales Management (1971)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/McNamara_fallacy

This is often justified as an attempt to be objective, but I think the actual reason is that it’s hard to deal with unquantifiable properties.



Is there a counter fallacy along the lines of "if we can't measure everything, we shouldn't measure anything"? It can still be an interesting, fun and informative exercise while keeping in mind that it may be limited.




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