Comment by jader201
2 years ago
The moral of this article seems to just point out what we all already know, and what has already been discussed on HN countless times: don't measure performance solely by things that should never be measured in a vacuum (like story points, lines of code, etc.).
Not sure why this is the #1 article on HN right now, other than maybe the (what I would consider) click-baity headline. But I wish there was an acceptable way for HN to use more fitting titles for articles (especially since most articles always use a click-baity headline). E.g. would it be at the top if the title was "Don't measure performance by story points"?
I guess some interesting anecdotes have resulted in the post, but the message of the article itself doesn't seem to share anything particularly new or enlightening.
>E.g. would it be at the top if the title was "Don't measure performance by story points"?
TBH it's a non-zero chance here on HN. "Don't measure by story points" is still preaching to the choir to a community like this after all.
>I guess some interesting anecdotes have resulted in the post, but the message of the article itself doesn't seem to share anything particularly new or enlightening.
1. Lucky 10k. Especially if it involves some managers who may in fact be doing this stuff as we speak
2. Generally, I come to the comments because some anecdotes are more interesting than the article.
Agreed, but also: enough people are disagreeing with the moral of the story that I think we can no longer assume anything in the article is preaching to the choir.
I actually don’t think that’s what the author is arguing. They are arguing that certain metrics that are valuable to measure at a team level become less useful or even misleading if you zoom in too far to an individual level. Story points being a good example. Useful when talking about a team, not useful when talking about individuals. That’s a more nuanced point, and one that I definitely don’t think is obvious to everyone.
> I guess some interesting anecdotes have resulted in the post, but the message of the article itself doesn't seem to share anything particularly new or enlightening.
Enough commenters here on HN are disagreeing with the article's conclusion that I think we can infer this is not a point everyone here agrees on, and the article was needed after all...