Not Everything That Counts Can be Counted

Doing some reading I came across the phrase “Not everything that counts can be counted” which then led me to a Quote Investigator article where I learned about the person who said this. Here is the original quote:

It would be nice if all of the data which sociologists require could be enumerated because then we could run them through IBM machines and draw charts as the economists do. However, not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.

The person who said it is William Bruce Cameron, a sociologist.

I really do like this quote and I should share it with teams that are being asked to quantify the benefits of talented software developers, high quality of code and all the other important things that usually cannot be expressed in numbers. Their absence is visible but only to those who have seen the good things that happen when they are present.