Goodhart's law
expressionops culturegovernance & risk
'When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.'
Economist Charles Goodhart observed the effect in 1975 monetary policy; anthropologist Marilyn Strathern gave it the crisp modern phrasing. Engineering lives it daily: optimize ticket-close counts and quality dies, optimize line coverage and tests stop asserting, optimize velocity and estimates inflate. Any metric worth managing by is worth gaming, so pair every target with the behavior it is supposed to proxy.