what to measure -- Value or Expense, was Re: Responsibility

Charlie,

"CP" == Charlie Poole wrote:

 >> "CP" == Charlie Poole wrote:

 >> Well, why not use usual business planning process?  When I have to
 >> justify financial investment, I project a cash flow and calculate NPV.
 >> That's what I may do for waterflow project.  In Agile project I may
 >> apply options analysis.
 >> 
 >> Yes, it's still speculations, but, at least, it's put into objective
 >> measure.  And one may check to what extent they became true....

 CP> It's hard - as I assume you know - to assign cash flow to certain
 CP> things. This is particularly true in IT, where it's all internal.

Sure, I know that.  Nevertheless, I have strong feelings (no facts now)
that it's closely tied to particular organization style widespread in
world.  My wild guess is, after organizational adoption of Agile and Lean
principles, it would be much easier to estimate such ephemerial things. 

No facts still..  Gonna to spend couple years in business development to
produce, analyze and publish such things...  

 CP> For example, I worked on a system many years ago that improved
 CP> the ability of staff to retrieve customer information. There was
 CP> no projection of cost savings, because we were investing money to
 CP> provide new - or better - service to customers than before.

Aha..  New or improved service...  Could manager you mentioned later,
estimate how much cash flow and when it would generate?  Even informally.. 

[...]

 CP> Btw, I expect most top executives would understand and smile at
 CP> your characterization of the measure as Expense rather than
 CP> Value... even those who are doing it.
 >> 
 >> Why?

 CP> I'm not sure I understand what the Why applies to, but I'll try
 CP> to answer.

 CP> What I was suggesting is that you should not believe that people
 CP> who measure expense instead of final value are simply stupid. They
 CP> may wish for a better measure of value, but they only have what
 CP> they have.

 CP> Smiling is all they believe they can do at that moment. It's black
 CP> humor of course...

Ah, _that_ way :)  Got it.

-- 
Andrey V Khavryuchenko            http://www.kds.com.ua/
Silver Bullet Software Solutions  http://www.kds.com.ua/edu/

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