How to measure anything

Douglas Hubbard (left) and Norman Fenton in London 15 Nov 2014.

If you want to know how to use measurement to reduce risk and uncertainty in a wide range of business applications, then there is no better book than Douglas Hubbard's "How to Measure Anything: Finding the Value of Intangibles in Business" (now in its 3rd edition). Douglas is also the author of the excellent "The Failure of Risk Management: Why It's Broken and How to Fix It".

Anyone who has read our Bayesian Networks book or the latest (3rd edition) of my Software Metrics book (the one I gave Douglas in the above picture!) will know how much his work has influenced us recently.

Although we have previously communicated about technical issues by email, today I had the pleasure of meeting Douglas for the first time when we were able to meet for lunch in London.We discussed numerous topics of mutual interest (including the problems with classical hypothesis testing - and how Bayes provides a better alternative, and evolving work on the 'value of information' which enables you to identify where to focus your measurement to optimise your decision-making).