Category: Data Management
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Get an early start for on-time data modeling
I’m a data modeler, so I enjoyed Jonathon Geiger’s recent article entitled “Why Does Data Modeling Take So Long”. But why does he say it like it’s a bad thing? Mr. Geiger’s bottom line is exactly right: “Most of the time spent developing data models is consumed developing or clarifying the requirements and business rules…
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Thoughts after agile training: strengthening values, reducing the cost of honesty, and growing apps
I recently completed ScrumMaster training ably presented by Lyssa Adkins. Throughout the two-day class we appreciated Lyssa’s Zen-like, enabling, style. If her name is familiar, it’s because Ms. Adkins is the author of the book Coaching Agile Teams, one of the leading texts on the subject. I’ve participated on agile projects, but so far only…
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Health care data security: how bad is it?
It is really bad, according to a recent survey by the Ponemon Institute (available here with registration). The white paper, entitled Health Data at Risk in Development: A Call for Data Masking, presents the results of a survey of 492 health care IT professionals on their companies’ practices regarding use of live personal health care…
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Data quality and data governance lessons from national health care
Who would want to be a national health care administrator? Who would want the responsibility for managing health care and formulating health policy for tens or hundreds of millions of people? It seems obvious that such decisions would rely on quality data. A recent interview impressed upon me how much data managers can learn from a…
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But is it art? Skills of the next generation BI professional
There’s a data explosion going on and perhaps the strangest result is that business intelligence analysts need to become more artistic. Recently my friend Ben Harden directed my attention to a post from Steve Bennett of Oz Analytics on the future of BI. One challenge to analysts that Mr. Bennett cited was the unprecedented explosion in data…
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Metadata goals, ROI, and point solutions
Recently there has been a long, and very interesting, discussion of do-it-yourself versus third-party metadata tools on LinkedIn’s TDWI BI and DW discussion forum (membership required to follow the link). I have followed but haven’t commented, but I suppose I contributed when Information Management kindly published my article on DIY metadata. The discussion is extremely…
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On DW federation, whac-a-mole, and integrating business data
Information Management recently sent around their pick of best IM blog articles of 2009. Among them was Forrester’s James Kobelius’s reaction to Bill Inmon’s “incineration of a straw man concept that he refers to as ‘virtual data warehousing (DW).’” According to Mr. Inmon, virtual data warehousing reminds him of the carnival game called whac-a-mole. He…
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Cloud databases and business/IT alignment
Today, the foundation of most of our custom-built systems is a relational dbms. While development frameworks vary, they overwhelmingly access and maintain data in relational tables and columns. As I write I routinely save this post in a MySQL database, and at work I tend SQL Server applications. Millions of others develop, use, and extract…
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BI Business Case Basics: Three Things to Remember
Here are three things to remember when putting together a BI business case: Intangible benefits don’t count. BI has no inherent value. Senior managers often make decisions about future outcomes with insufficient data.
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Don’t forget to get it done
In a recent article at Information Management, Maria Villar and Theresa Kushner offer 4 Steps to Create an Effective IT and Business Partnership, a very useful list of ways to ensure “strong partnership between IT and business”. To the authors this partnership “is the most important, and often overlooked, component to successfully managing critical business…