Category: Project Management
-
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.
-
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…
-
Got chaos? Manage to milestones with risks and issues
“When you are in the middle of a story it isn’t a story at all, but only a confusion; a dark roaring, a blindness, a wreckage of shattered glass and splintered wood; like a house in a whirlwind, or else a boat crushed by the icebergs or swept over the rapids, and all aboard powerless to…
-
Study data early to improve application alignment
A recurring theme in the literature on IT over the years has been frequent failure of IT projects. Most studies lay the bulk of the blame on requirements (examples here and here). One way to improve accuracy and fit-to-purpose of requirements, and thereby promote project success, is to include data analysis as well as process…
-
DQ, he isn’t so dumb he just needs glasses
In a recent very thoughtful post on data quality, Paul Erb plays out an analogy comparing data users with Don Quixote and data quality professionals with Sancho Panza, then reverses the analogy to cleverly coin the “Sancho Panza” test of data quality professionals. He encourages data quality professionals promoting the critical role of data quality…
-
IT should own the misalignment problem
In a new post at Insurance Networking News Ara Trembly provides a balanced perspective on IT/business misalignment (Business/IT Misalignment: Whose Responsibility?). He describes the problem as cultural, more amenable to relational than management solutions. His conclusion sums it up: “Take a geek/suit to lunch today!” To me (speaking as an IT professional) IT should take…
-
Do your homework before presenting a BI business case
Before starting the Business Intelligence business case, the BI advocate should do the homework required to ensure its success, including these essential steps: 1. Know the organization’s goals and objectives. 2. Identify a BI champion. 3. Identify and work with BI stakeholders. 4. Identify an application with tangible business value. 5. Define and quantify a…
-
Big project coming up? Learn to two-step.
History is littered with IT application projects that end late, go way over budget, or abandoned altogether. I was fortunate enough to see one work out really well (almost – please read on). It was no mistake. It came down to a simple method advocated by a gentleman named named John Carpenter. The project was…
-
Beware the devils in the details of data integration
Much of today’s IT application development – custom or off-the-shelf – involves integrating data from legacy systems, third- party software products and external data sources such as demographics or mail lists. More often than not, data integration is unexpectedly complex, either due to data quality issues or the nature of the data integration itself.
-
Followership
Not everyone gets to be a leader, and most leaders are also followers in their own right. The project manager follows instructions from the project sponsor, the CEO from the board, the politicians from the polls, and so on. Followership is the yang to leadership’s yin, and according to many interesting sources following can be…