Category: IT
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Jürgen Klinsmann’s Waterfall to Agile Transition
How does this sound as advice for an app dev manager leading his or her team from waterfall to Agile? Clearly articulate a compelling end-state vision Work from a position of authority Weather the storms Reward creativity while fostering improvement A post at scrumsource.com lists leadership, organizational culture, and people as three of the five…
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Data Management: So Easy a Caveman Can Do It?
I recently stumbled upon one of The Martin Agency’s hilarious Geico caveman ads and wondered, rather geekily, why they didn’t do one about data analysis. I think if a caveman suddenly arrived in the 2010s he or she would see parallels between his life and the activities of today’s knowledge worker. When I thought it through,…
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A New Framework for Data Management?
I hold a strong prejudice that IT paradigms are useful for about 30 years. The PC was dominant from 1980 to 2010, “online” mainframe systems from 1970 to 2000, and so on. If that’s the case then time’s up for Bill Inmon’s data warehousing framework. So far no widely held pattern has emerged to help…
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Data Governance Begins At the Spreadsheet
Data management professionals have long and sometimes rather Quixotically driven organizations to “get past the spreadsheet culture.” Maybe that’s misguided. The recent furor over a widely read social science paper may show how we can look to scientific peer review for a way to govern data, spreadsheets and all. Recently, it was found that a…
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A Fist Full of Agile Critiques
Out of curiosity I recently reviewed articles critical of Agile Methodologies. I had expected agile-versus-waterfall arguments and attacks from vendors selling new alternatives, but even given the reputation that advocates have for flaming well-intentioned critics, I wasn’t prepared for the level of emotion I found. My opening position was that Agile techniques are great, but…
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Relational DB Pros: The Times They Are A-Changin’
Recently I read a thoughtful post at the PASS Business Analytics Conference site discussing how different the world is now for database professionals. Author Chris Webb focuses on the data science side in this post. His analysis made me think of the challenges and opportunities “big data” serves up to relational database designers. To me these…
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What Driving Dogs Tell Us About Learning
Recently the BBC posted this video. On first view it is just funny, but watching those dogs learn to drive really reminded me of personal experiences with IT teams making big learning transitions. To represent those real situations let’s consider a fictional team of SQL developers facing the daunting task of deploying a functional Hadoop-based…
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Skills of the Data Architect
One common theme in recent tectonic shifts in information technology is data management. Analyzing customer responses may require combing through unstructured emails and tweets. Timely analysis of web interactions may demand a big data solution. Deployment of data visualization tools to users may dictate redesign of warehouses and marts. The data architect is a key…
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Lessons from the puppy poster
In some presentations, I assert that top-down data modeling should result in not only a business-consistent model but also a pretty well normalized model. One of the basic concepts behind normalization is functional dependency. In layperson’s terms, functional dependency means separating entities from each other and putting attributes into the obviously correct entity. For example, a…
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Selected data modeling best practices
Recently I was in a conversation about data modeling standards. I confess that I’m not really the standards type. I understand the value of standards and especially how important it is to follow them so others can interpret and use work products. It is just that I prefer to focus on understanding of the principles…