There are almost unlimited opinions in the project management world that are personal opinion, ancedotes from personal experience, and applied to a specific domain and a context in that domain. This is all good, it's a source of information and a conversation starter.
But without the proper labeling, it's difficult to tell where this information comes from.
This information has two attributes:
- It's subjective (opinion) - it is an opinion that may be based on a collection of observations over some period of time, but can't be traced to a credible set of verified processes to produced those observations.
- It's verifiable - there is statistically sound evidence that this piece of information is validated or validatable in a named domain and context in that domain, and can be observed in the absence of the speaker.
There are two intended audiences:
- It is for Personal consumption - meaning this is an opinion shared between individuals (or small groups) in private or restricted group. Some place like a cocktail party, standing on line at the bank, or chatting with stangers at the tennis court, or in the lunch room of the office.
- It is for Public consumption - meaning this information has been vetted to have some sort of credibility that makes it interesting to strangers. For verified information you need to provide references, a bibliography, the underlying data, the analysis processes of this data that resulted in this informaiton - so the listener can do the same validation as well to confirm that you're not just making this !@#$ up or worse pawning off your personal ancedotes as actual fact outside your personal experiences.
