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Douglas W. Hubbard
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How to Measure Anything: Finding the Value of "Intangibles" in Business MP3 CD – Unabridged, September 20, 2011

by Douglas W. Hubbard (Author), David Drummond (Narrator)
4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 130 ratings
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How to Measure Anything in Cybersecurity Risk
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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.
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  1. Print length
    320 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Tantor Audio
  4. Publication date
    September 20, 2011
  5. Dimensions
    5.3 x 0.6 x 7.4 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    1452654204
  7. ISBN-13
    978-1452654201
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"I use this book as a primary reference for my measurement class at MIT. The students love it because it provides practical advice that can be applied to a variety of scenarios, from aerospace and defense, healthcare, politics, etc." ---Ricardo Valerdi, Ph.D., Lecturer, MIT

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Tantor Audio; MP3 - Unabridged CD edition (September 20, 2011)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • MP3 CD ‏ : ‎ 320 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1452654204
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1452654201
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 4.2 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.3 x 0.6 x 7.4 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 130 ratings

About the author

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Douglas W. Hubbard

Douglas W. Hubbard

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Douglas W. Hubbard is the inventor of Applied Information Economics (AIE). He is an internationally recognized expert in the field of measuring intangibles, risks, and value, especially in IT value, and is a popular speaker at numerous conferences. He has written articles for InformationWeek, 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. Doug is the author of How to Measure Anything: Finding the Value of Intangibles in Business (Wiley).

Customer reviews

4.3 out of 5 stars
130 global ratings

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Customers say

Customers find the book provides helpful information on measuring intangibles. They appreciate the clarity with which advanced statistical concepts are explained. The book is described as readable and easy to understand. Readers appreciate the clear explanation of measurement and the ability to get measurable results.

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ReadabilityInformation valueMeasurement accuracy
46 customers mention "Readability"38 positive8 negative

Customers find the book easy to read and understand. They appreciate the well-chosen illustrations and find it insightful and engaging. The first edition is excellent, and the author's expertise in the topic is shown.

"...The first edition is excellent. Upon learning of a second edition, I immediately bought the updated book for a fresh re-read...." Read more

"...Regardless, this book is an excellent read and still highly recommended to asset managers, especially those that take care of physical assets." Read more

"...Fundamentally, this book is about method, process, first principles - ideas about measurement and information applied in a business context - and..." Read more

"...As mentioned above, the book is pretty good.It covers a lot about measurement. There were a few things that made me uncomfortable in the book...." Read more

44 customers mention "Information value"44 positive0 negative

Customers find the book provides helpful information on measuring intangibles. They appreciate the clear explanation of advanced statistical concepts and techniques. The book is a great introduction to the topic, providing tools that anyone with a reasonable grasp of math can use. It helps them consider measurement problems, plan projects, and assist with business assistance.

"...o Example calculations, all done with Microsoft® Excel...." Read more

"...Regardless, this book is an excellent read and still highly recommended to asset managers, especially those that take care of physical assets." Read more

"...Fundamentally, this book is about method, process, first principles - ideas about measurement and information applied in a business context - and..." Read more

"...or "Can the error be reduced further?" The book is about using information (data) that is available and performing statistical analysis, sometimes..." Read more

17 customers mention "Measurement accuracy"17 positive0 negative

Customers find the book helpful for measuring accurately. They say it provides a better understanding of measurement and how to get results. The third part covers actual measuring, statistical analysis, and small sample inference. Calculation worksheets, additional calibration quizzes, papers, and articles are included.

"...the reader can download example calculation worksheets, additional calibration quizzes, papers, articles, and reader comments...." Read more

"...the analysis of data once it's been gathered, this book is fundamentally about measurement: obtaining data...." Read more

"...is about using information (data) that is available and performing statistical analysis, sometimes in an elementary way, to eliminate uncertainty,..." Read more

"...As mentioned above, the book is pretty good.It covers a lot about measurement. There were a few things that made me uncomfortable in the book...." Read more

Top reviews from the United States

  • John Schuyler
    5.0 out of 5 stars Focuses on the key inputs of a decision analysis
    Reviewed in the United States on July 28, 2011
    Verified Purchase
    Highly recommended.

    Most capital investments are poorly analyzed. Doug Hubbard provides remedies for the common shortcomings:

    o Typical cost-benefit analyses use single-value best estimates for inputs; these ignore or inadequately address risk and uncertainty. Also, often, important benefits are omitted because they are "intangibles" such as "improved customer service." Remedies in the book: Capture expert judgments as probability distributions; then solve the forecast model with Monte Carlo simulation. Decompose and explicitly represent former-intangibles in measurable units.

    o Multi-criteria scoring approaches often feel good yet have little theoretical foundation. They are entirely subjective and have not been shown to improve decision-making. Remedy: clarify the business (or other) objective and craft a quantified decision policy accordingly. Judge and/or model inputs in meaningful, quantitative terms.

    Everything important to a decision should be in a forecasting model. And everything in those models is either structural or quantified.

    For me, three primary themes emerge in the book:

    1. Calibration. Hubbard asserts that everything can be quantified--and he enjoys challenging individuals and groups to find any exception. Most people, even if expert in their field, are biased when making judgments. Hubbard shows ways to "calibrate" these experts (including the reader) with perhaps a half-day of practice. Most readers (as did I) will find that they initially fare poorly on the engaging calibration exercises in the book. We suffer from overconfidence and other cognitive biases. With feedback and practice, most people can quickly improve at assessing probabilities and probability distributions, and confidence ranges.

    2. What needs to be measured further? The most interesting calculation in the book is a form of sensitivity analysis. Which variables are most important to measure further? Hubbard calculates the value of perfect information for each variable with a straightforward expected opportunity loss calculation. Though an analysis may have dozens of identified variables with uncertainty, in his experience typically only 1 to 3 variables are worthy of further measurement.

    3. Deliberately seek information about the most-important risks and uncertainties where the additional time and cost are justified. This usually means obtaining more data with targeted investigation. Hubbard offers these encouraging maxims:
    o It has been done before
    o You have more data than you think
    o You need less data than you think
    o It is more economical than you think

    Additional highlights of the book include:

    o Abundant war story examples. Much of Hubbard's work has been in the information technology (IT) sector. I especially enjoyed the case about forecasting fuel consumption for the U.S. Marine Corps.

    o Demystifying parameters that the reader might initially think as "intangibles." For example, "Improved Customer Service" might be measured in terms of percent of customers re-ordering; percent of returns; average delivery time, etc.

    o Example calculations, all done with Microsoft® Excel. He hosts a website, [...], where the reader can download example calculation worksheets, additional calibration quizzes, papers, articles, and reader comments.

    The first edition is excellent. Upon learning of a second edition, I immediately bought the updated book for a fresh re-read. This was again a good investment of time and money. The new edition is updated, expanded (about 15%), and more crisp. The editing and layout are again excellent. Several references are now embedded to his other best-selling and companion book, The Failure of Risk Management.
    14 people found this helpful
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  • Carl Kirstein
    4.0 out of 5 stars fantastic to open your mind... dangerous to close it as well
    Reviewed in the United States on September 2, 2013
    Verified Purchase
    This is one of the few books that I well and truly recommend to my colleagues to read, given that we are mostly stuck with the simple risk models in matrices for the majority of our risk management endeavors. This book provides a very good insight as to how risk could be approached and how your information is probably better than you think it is.

    the danger with Hubbard's writing style is that he promotes his approach above all other approaches, insisting that anything can be quantified and should be quantified in your risk management. This is maybe good for ordered-domain problems (referring to the Cynefin framework of Prof Snowden), but unordered or disordered domain problems could be too overwhelming (or impossible) for this approach. Hubbard does not seem to care enough for the limitations of this approach. Regardless, this book is an excellent read and still highly recommended to asset managers, especially those that take care of physical assets.
    2 people found this helpful
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  • Robert
    5.0 out of 5 stars Business Metrology
    Reviewed in the United States on August 2, 2012
    Verified Purchase
    It would be tempting to refer to this book as a business statistics book in disguise - as it is certainly that - but given its title, it's really a book about "business metrology." While most texts on statistics mostly cover the analysis of data once it's been gathered, this book is fundamentally about measurement: obtaining data. Given the close coupling between the two, binding both within a single business cover makes for a very useful and practical business tool.

    There have been a couple of reviews stating that the book doesn't offer practical ways to measure intangibles. One of the lessons from this book is that by their very nature, intangibles often have to be measured indirectly by observing other variables and then discovering a correlation. Statistical analysis can handle the latter, but choosing an appropriate set of other variables can be very challenging, often requiring clever outside-the-box thinking.

    Fundamentally, this book is about method, process, first principles - ideas about measurement and information applied in a business context - and not so much about their technological implementation; however, it's interesting to see how the former fares as the latter progresses. If the concepts remain unscathed or are reinforced, one can conclude that they continue to be valid and useful.

    Since the original 2007 publication date, "big data," "analytics," and "data science" have become everyday business terms. In the chapter, "Illusion of Intangibles," the author lists four useful measurement assumptions. The second is, "You have more data than you think." Big data in the business context is based on the notion that businesses collect and store mountains of data. So you do have more data than you think, a LOT more. Often however, much of it is recorded for other purposes and seems on the surface to have little value otherwise. However, this book suggests we challenge this assumption. If all this data could be somehow collected and analyzed, it's possible that there could be ways to extract the latent information hidden inside.

    There are lots of recent examples of this kind of analysis. One is the 2009 Google Flu Trends' prediction of the advance of the H1N1 pandemic in 2009. Here is a wonderful example of what the author refers to as a Fermi problem: (cleverly) using what you do know to measure indirectly what you are looking for. One of the most valuable aspects of this analysis - aside that it was essentially free - was that it made predictions in near real-time. The notion that it's possible to track the activity of a pandemic by analyzing search terms entered in a web browser is quite remarkable - or it was at the time. It's actually common-place now. It's also indicative that the concepts discussed in the book are not only valid, relevant, and useful, but are possibly even more so now given the access to data and computation that drive big data, analytics, and data science in business.
    7 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

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  • Oakville, ON
    5.0 out of 5 stars This book measures up!
    Reviewed in Canada on February 8, 2014
    Verified Purchase
    I work in an industry where it is difficult to measure your effectiveness and show clients that your service is more than a necessary expense. It allowed me to build dashboards and KPI's to show my client's the value that they are receiving and it has allowed us to obtain more business.
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  • Jan Fischbach (www.teamworkblog.de)
    5.0 out of 5 stars Ein Plädoyer für Selbst-Denken und Ausprobieren und Messen (statt Meinungen)
    Reviewed in Germany on December 14, 2012
    Verified Purchase
    Verschiedene Blogs haben immer wieder auf dieses Buch verwiesen. Nachdem ich es jetzt selbst gelesen habe, muss ich sagen, es lohnt sich es zu lesen. Wahrscheinlich kaufe ich mir zum E-Book jetzt auch noch die gedruckte Ausgabe.

    Der Autor plädiert im Wesentlichen für Experimente im Business-Umfeld. Wenn eine Entscheidung wichtig ist, muss es messbare Effekte geben. Und beschreibt ganz gut, wie man das rausfinden kann. Seine Empfehlungen sind sehr praktisch.

    Das Buch eignet sich zum Beispiel für Projektmanager, die einen Business Case erstellen müssen.
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  • 6**45
    5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant book and a great help
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 26, 2012
    Verified Purchase
    This book helps to to measure the things that count and stop measuring the things that don't count! It tells you how and why you should change. It is easy to understand.
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  • Prairy Earth
    4.0 out of 5 stars Good book on the topic of Measuring Activities
    Reviewed in Canada on September 30, 2016
    Verified Purchase
    This is probably the definitive book on how to measure activities. In fact, as the title implies, it's a book on measuring anything. If you're working as a manager in a business, this is a worthwhile, but dry, read. I have not read future editions of the book, so I can't say whether the writing style has improved.
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  • Egon Rüffel
    3.0 out of 5 stars Langathmig, aber nicht uninteressant
    Reviewed in Germany on April 1, 2012
    Verified Purchase
    Man könnte die Aussagen auch mit einem Drittel der Worte schreiben. Aber man findet immer wieder etwas interessantes. Anything stimmt nur bedingt, da der Autor messen als etwas mehr Information bekommen definiert, und das ist für die Praxis häufig zu wenig.
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