A team disagreement that data did not resolve

Two people with the same evidence reaching opposite conclusions about a tool, which is a disagreement about values rather than about facts.

the agreed facts, after a quarter:

  it is fast at scaffolding and at tests for existing
    code
  it is confidently wrong about this codebase's
    conventions
  review takes longer per line and there are more lines
  nobody has measured whether net output changed

the disagreement:
  one position — the review cost is worth the speed
  the other — reviewing code nobody wrote erodes the
    understanding that makes review possible

both follow from the facts. neither is refutable with
more data.

A disagreement that survives agreement on the evidence is not going to be settled by measurement, and treating it as an empirical question wastes everybody’s time. What we settled instead was scope — where the tool is used and where it is not — which is a decision two people with different views can both accept.