Why should I care about Entropy? Part 1 of 2

In this episode, Ricardo explains what is entropy and how it’s related to project management. Next week, he’ll show how we can act in the midst of disorder within a project environment. Watch the video by Prof. Brian Cox: http://rvarg.as/fc

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Episode transcript

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Hello, everyone. Welcome to the five minutes PM. I guess. Today. I like to talk about a different topic. I want to talk about why should we go hear about Entropy four, many of you Entropy is maybe a war that you heard a little bit when you were saying turning on physics and this, but it's a real thing. And it's happening every single moment. Every single day in absolutely every single project. I want to start suggesting you.

One thing, I suggest you to watch a video at a very short five minute video from professor Brian Cox and the name of the video it's on YouTube. It's hell, a sandcastle. Reveal's the end of outfits. It's for me, probably the best video ever to explain the concept of Entropy and Why I am spending now these five minutes to talk to you about this topic in project management environment. Do you know why it's because managing projects is basically our endless five, right against Entropy.

So B a project manager means to be a fighter against the concept and the movement of the Entropy, but lets talk and lets understand what is Entropy technically Entropy is base it on the, the second law of thermodynamics. And this was a very revolutionary concept. And the Entropy say that every system tends to move from order to chaos, from order to disorder, order means a state of low Entropy disorder and it's a state of high Entropy.

Let's give some examples here for us and you don't need to mess what are your house to clean it every week? Because for example, someone to help you with the cleaning is coming next day and how's become messy and dirty by itself. You don't need to throw things on the floor. They just fall in the floor, your lamp, the bulb that you put in, in your salient, it burns necessarily, but it does not fix naturally, right?

So it's very, very important that you understand that the kales comes by itself. For example, you have a wall, the wall collapsed net really overtime, but the wall never Buttes a dramatically over time because this is not the natural process. So the natural process is a process of disorder and not a process of order. And we SPMS, what do we want? We want to create a minimum set of order so we can promise to our clients too, our boss, too, our main stakeholders that will deliver something on a specific budget and an or a specific date in, in order to do that, we use a lot of techniques, a lot of twos in, we put a lot of energy that only way that I can Entropy does not act it's if you put energy too, keep the order.

So let me give you an example that I love imagined that you just bought a white tee shirt. Okay? What is a white tee shirt? It's a completely clean, imperfect state. Is it completely organized at the environment? Right? It's all white and everything. So let's suppose that you start using what will happen with your shirt. Will it become cleaner or dirty or you all know, you will say, Oh, of course it becomes dirty.

Well, why? Because there are only infinite, absolutely infinite things that I can do. Do you do your chert to make your shirt lose this magic white order? I can take a pen and I can draw something in one Part I can make a hole. I can do a scratch. You can sit in a walks, you can do everything you can. For example, get a rain with a lot of dust So oldest States.

So there are zillions, not even a day, billions zillions ways of destroying your shirt, but there is only one way that will make you happy was the order of your shirt. If your shirt has one scratch, if your shirt that one stain, it's not acceptable for you because this possibility will damage your shirt. So this is exactly. So your honor chert is a low Entropy structure.

An all the others are high Entropy because it's pretty much, ah, I'm just saying you can have something in happen in your shirt that will make it to get cleaner, but the probability of this to happen, it's a very, very, very, very small barrier, which the possibility of the chaos. And this is the concept of the Entropy this concept. What is so profound that this is one of the reasons that we call arrow of time.

That one we can say that time only moves to the future time does not go back in the past because it's always, he's moving to a low, a higher Entropy structure. And now what I want to finish this podcast, there is a lot of things you can do to manage this Entropy and this will be exactly what I plan to do to discuss with you next week, when I say planning for day Entropy, what can you do? Because you can not do it changed the laws of the universe of the kales, but you can manage it properly in order to increase in order to improve the chances of your success.

Right? But this is something I want to discuss and talk to you next week with another five minutes BM Podcast.

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