Goodhart’s law

Any observed statistical regularity will tend to collapse once pressure is placed upon it for control purposes. Goodhart's law (source Wikipedia) Or, in other words, once you tell people "improve that KPI or else", that KPI will be abused to the point of becoming useless: the KPI will improve, but the overall quality/speed/cost (pick a … Continue reading Goodhart’s law →

How to improve conversion rates

I watched Kevin Hale's presentation [1] "how to improve conversion rates" (with your UI) and liked his get-to-the-point style. I highly recommend watching the video and am summarizing the content here. I omitted a few parts of Hale's talk (eg. knowledge point and one push button) which, while encyclopedic and interesting, imho didn't advance the … Continue reading How to improve conversion rates →

Azure diaries: can’t access KeyVault

Context: as a tenant administrator you can't inspect KeyVault contents created by other people ("you are unauthorized to view these contents"). Solution: assign yourself appropriate permissions like this: Locate the KeyVault in the Azure portal: go to "Access policies"click "+Add Access Policy"Key permissions: everything under "Key Management Operations" and "Cryptographic Operations"Accordingly for key and certificate … Continue reading Azure diaries: can’t access KeyVault →

Tests are not just about testing

Tests in the context of software development have a surprisingly broad field of uses which exceeds "just" testing. Those further uses paint a more colourful picture of tests than just regression keepers. Tests as a component runtime: a test is the workbench on which the component is developed. Instead of constantly restarting an application server … Continue reading Tests are not just about testing →