How do we, as IT (information technology), interact with the business? This is where I see companies failing quite a bit lately. We just can’t seem to create a good way of communicating with the business people. The business people don’t quite understand IT processes, and we (IT) don’t understand why they
We’re in the process of trying to find a builder to complete an extension on our home. My "project" is five years overdue, behind budget and struggling with supplier issues. What is interesting is that every builder we interview for the new build brings his own frame of reference to the
Fifteen years ago, updating a website required knowledge of HTML. Now, many content management systems like WordPress, Tumblr and Joomla merely require knowledge of WYSIWYG tools like Microsoft Word. So, will the same thing happen with big data? I hesitate to say that everyone will need to learn data-related skills. I
I have previously compared data visualizations to the magic mirrors of business intended to reflect what you need to see, such as true business insights, but which, because of how our eyes process data, may just be reflecting back your own image of what you want your data to show
Instituting an analytics program in which actionable insight is delivered to a business consumer will be successful if those consumers are aware of what they need to do to improve their processes and reap the benefits. As we have explored over the past few posts, success in the use of
“Our corporate data is growing at a rate of 27% each year and we expect that to increase. It’s just getting too expensive to extend and maintain our data warehouse.” “Don’t talk to us about our ‘big’ data. We’re having enough trouble getting our ‘small’ data processed and analyzed in
“To attain knowledge, add things every day. To attain wisdom, subtract things every day." --Lao Tzu Dataviz is all the rage these days. We just don't hear the term "chart" as often anymore. It's now a data visualization. George Carlin would be proud. Of course, not all data visualizations are
In my previous post, I used a game show metaphor for one aspect of metadata management, namely making sure table definitions are not ambiguously labeled. In this post, I will use name tags as a metaphor to discuss an important intersection of metadata management and master data management (MDM), an
The data quality and data governance community has a somewhat disconcerting habit to want to append the word “quality” to every phrase that has the word “data” in it. So it is no surprise that the growing use of the phrase “big data” has been duly followed by claims of
If you work in the software industry, seeing technologies emerge and catch fire is a great spectator sport. Whether it's a programming language, a platform or something like e-commerce, each new wave ripples throughout the industry. Currently, Hadoop is having its time in the sun, and we are all trying
