Category: IT
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Secrets of Successful Projects
I’ve had the good fortune to have been involved in many successful application development and analytics efforts (here and here), and a few that were less so (here and here). Recently, I’ve thought about the differences between the successful and the unsuccessful. As I see it, there are five general characteristics that the successful endeavors…
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One More Species of Overloaded Data
A while back I wrote the post A Field Guide to Overloaded Data, which publicized the work of Duane Hufford, who examined different types of overloaded data during the 1990s. Over the years his classifications of overloaded data effectively categorized data anomalies I encountered in the wild. That is until recently, when a colleague encountered…
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The Myth of Agile Sign-Off
Although Agile writers and thinkers agree that “there is no sign-off” in Agile methodology, the practice of requiring product owners and business customers to sign off on requirements and delivered work products persists in Agile settings. I’ve seen it most when an agile team faces delivery challenges and leaders perceive the problem is scope creep or…
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Two key interview questions for SQL developer candidates
Frequently in my career I’ve selected or helped select ETL and reporting professionals who need SQL skills. For some of those opportunities, placement firms returned resumes with interminable, and nearly identical, lists of technical achievements with excruciating unnecessary detail (paraphrasing: “Wrote SELECT statements using GROUP BY”, “Applied both inner and outer joins”). Before interviewing we…
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Data Architecture for Improved Dashboard Performance
Sometimes success seems like a data analytics team’s worst enemy. A few successful visualizations packaged up into a dashboard by a small skunkworks team can generate interest such that a year later the team has published scores of mission critical dashboards. As their use spreads throughout the organization, and as features expand to meet the…
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Resources for Working From Home: Tips and Gear
In our current “social distancing” situation, many are working remotely in a serious way for the first time. As one who’s worked full time from home for the past four years, and frequently before that, I thought I should share some tips based on experience. Below are my top three tips and then some of…
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More on “Select Failed. [2646] No more spool space”
Also see the previous related post Escaping Teradata Purgatory (Select Failed. [2646] No more spool space) Not too long ago I posted on how to avoid the dreaded “No more spool space” error in Teradata SQL. That post recounted approaches to restructuring SQL queries so that they would avoid being cancelled for using inordinate amounts…
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Data Governance Meets Procurement
Why pay good money for bad data? Of course no one would do that on purpose, but I as a consultant over many years I’ve often seen it. A vendor fulfills a contract to the letter, which unfortunately allows them to deliver required reports in various, sometimes changing, formats with suspect data quality. The customer…
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Toward a Values-Based Approach to Auditing Agile Projects
By now Agile has taken over waterfall as the dominant app dev project pattern*. In many large organizations, the traditional waterfall PMO also owns Agile projects. One aspect of PMO oversight that can work against Agile culture is the project audit. If the goal of an audit is to ensure the project reflects Agile values,…
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Leadership Must Prioritize Data Quality
Data quality improvements follow specific, clear leadership from the top. Project leaders count data quality among project goals when senior management encourages them to do so with unequivocal incentives, a common business vocabulary, shared understanding of data quality principles, and general agreement on the objects of interest to the business and their key characteristics. Poor…