Fixing Perverse Incentives in Software Development
I read with interest an article about picking the right metric to incentivize desired behavior and thought I would add a little of my own personal insight. One problem with many (maybe most) software development organizations is that they inadvertently create perverse incentives , rewarding undesireable behavior and creating confusing and chaotic environments that, despite best efforts of all involved, seem to only on a hit or miss basis produce the desired result. Just as important, often the rewards are implicit and it isn't obvious that developers are actually being rewarded for the errant behavior. Some short examples of widely used, but poor metrics I've observed as well as some simple and arguably better alternatives follow. For example: Rewarding developers for "count of bugs fixed". Without accountability for who created the bug, this simply incents developers to release buggy half finished softwa