How to Measure Anything, Douglas W. Hubbard
How to Measure Anything, Douglas W. Hubbard
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How to Measure Anything
Finding the Value of "Intangibles" in Business

Author: Douglas W. Hubbard

Narrator: David Drummond

Unabridged: 12 hr 41 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 09/20/2011

Includes: Bonus Material Bonus Material Included


Synopsis

Anything can be measured. This bold assertion is the key to solving many problems in business and life in general. The myth that certain things can't be measured is a significant drain on our nation's economy, public welfare, the environment, and even national security. In fact, the chances are good that some part of your life or your professional responsibilities is greatly harmed by a lack of measurement—by you, your firm, or even your government.

Building up from simple concepts to illustrate the hands-on yet intuitively easy application of advanced statistical techniques, How to Measure Anything reveals the power of measurement in our understanding of business and the world at large. This insightful and engaging book shows you how to measure those things in your business that until now you may have considered "immeasurable," including technology ROI, organizational flexibility, customer satisfaction, and technology risk. Offering examples that will get you to attempt measurements—even when it seems impossible—this book provides you with the substantive steps for measuring anything, especially uncertainty and risk.

Don't wait—listen to this book and find out:

—The three reasons why things may seem immeasurable but are not

—Inspirational examples of where seemingly impossible measurements were resolved with surprisingly simple methods

—How computing the value of information will show that you probably have been measuring all the wrong things

—How not to measure risk

—Methods for measuring "soft" things like happiness, satisfaction, quality, and more

—How to fine-tune human judges to be powerful, calibrated measurement instruments

—How you can use the Internet as an instrument of measurement

A complete resource with case studies, How to Measure Anything illustrates how author Douglas Hubbard—creator of Applied Information Economics—has used his approach across various industries. You'll learn how any problem, no matter how difficult, ill-defined, or uncertain, can lend itself to measurement using proven methods. Straightforward and easy-to-follow, this is the resource you'll refer to again and again—beyond measure.

About Douglas W. Hubbard

Douglas W. Hubbard is the inventor of Applied Information Economics (AIE). His methodology has earned him critical praise from The Gartner Group, Giga Information Group, and Forrester Research. Doug is an internationally recognized expert in the field of IT value and is a popular speaker at numerous conferences. His published articles are in Information Week, CIO Enterprise, and DBMS Magazine. His AIE method has been applied to dozens of large Fortune 500 IT investments, military logistics, venture capital, aerospace, and environmental issues.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Takuro

The most important thing I learned from this book: “A measurement is a set of observations that reduce uncertainty where the result is expressed as a quantity.” Finally! Someone has clearly explained that measurements are all approximations. Very often in social research, I have to spend a lot of ti......more

As an engineer, this book makes me happy. A great discussion of how to break *any* problem down into quantifiable metrics, how to figure out which of those metrics is valuable, and how to measure them. The book is fairly actionable, there is a complementary website with lots of handy excel tools, an......more

Goodreads review by Jurgen

297 references to risk, and only 29 references to opportunity. No mention of unknown unknowns (or black swans), and no mention of the observer effect (goodhart's law). A great book, teaching you all about metrics, as long as you ignore complexity.......more

Goodreads review by Nils

An OK popularization of measurement techniques. But it downplays the key issue—which is data quality challenges, of which there are at least two types. The first is the "moneyball" type: a phenomenon where we know intuitively that there are important differences in measurable outcomes but we lack st......more

Goodreads review by Marcelo

An excellent read. It could be summed up as a "basic statistics for business" book, although it definitely goes beyond that in many aspects. As the title suggests, throughout the whole book the author strongly defends the case that everything can be measured, even though the method may not be obvious......more