An Inverse Femtobarn is a measure of the number of particle collision events per femtobarn. A barn is defined as 10-28 m2. A 100 square femtobarns is approximately the cross section of a Uranium atom.
If units of measure are well defined in this domain, why can't we have defined units of measure in project management, software development, and general IT processes? I reading Johanna Rothmann's new book about Portfolio Management, with the intent of writing a review - since I was sent the book from the publisher.
The first thing that pops out from the Rothman book is the management of "value" in the portfolios. Not definition of value, but the agilest use the term value when they say "increasing value." I like the book so far, absent these units of measure and an orthogonal definition of Portfolio Management from all other portfolio management books.
So what does it mean to increase value? Value to who? in what quantities?
No wonder we get confused about the activities in project management. In the classic PM 2.0 presentation stating Enterprise 2.0 solutions are "easy to use," "saves time," and "works everywhere." Everywhere like at the bottom of the ocean. saves time, like billions of seconds, or just a few. Easy to use, like my mutt rescue dog can use it?
This is a core problem - without definitive units of measure, measures of performance and measures of effectiveness in my Systems Engineer Pooh brain, the conversation about increasing the probability of success is just noise.
