Tag: Architecture
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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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Meaningful Requirements Start Successful Data Projects
To me, development projects fail or succeed in the first few weeks. Once a project starts off in the wrong direction, momentum and expectations tend to prevent a return to the proper path. With today’s wealth of database options each addressing exciting new possibilities, the right choice for the application’s data foundation plays a large…
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Sound Data Culture Enables Modern Data Architectures
Modern data architectures, by enabling data analytics insights, promise to drive order of magnitude value gains across many business sectors (here, here, and here). Not so long ago, big data presented a daunting challenge. Although tools were plentiful, we struggled to conceptualize the architecture and organization within which to capitalize on those tools. Now solid…
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Reporting Database Design Guidelines: Dimensional Values and Strategies
I recently found myself in a series of conversations in which I needed to make a case for dimensional data modeling. The discussions involved a group of highly skilled data architects who were surely familiar with dimensional techniques but didn’t see them as the best solution in the case at hand. I thought it would…
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A New Direction for Data at #EDW17
Obviously, data management is important. Unfortunately, it is not prioritized in most organizations. Those that effectively manage data perform far better than organizations that don’t. Everyone who needs data to do his/her job must drive change to improve data management. That was the theme of the recent Enterprise Data World (EDWorld) conference this week. This year’s EDWorld event might be the…
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More on the Agile Architect: Process and Knowledge Transfer
I’ve written about groupthink-related quality challenges on Agile projects, and the architect’s role in preventing groupthink from degrading quality. I’ve seen other risks related to the cohesion and potential insularity of successful Agile teams, and the architect is also well positioned to help prevent these: a tendency to neglect setting up and documenting repeatable processes, and a…
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Get the Big Picture: Effective High-Level Diagrams
I believe that early, effective big picture diagrams are key to application development project success. According to the old saw, no project succeeds without a catchy acronym. Maybe so, but I’d say no project succeeds without a good big picture diagram. The question: what constitutes a good one? To me good high-level diagrams have four key characteristics:…
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Data Design Matters
As important as it is, data modeling has always had a geeky, faintly impractical tinge to some. I’ve seen application development projects proceed with a suboptimal, “good enough”, model. The resulting systems might otherwise be well-architected, but sometimes strange vulnerabilities emerge that track directly to data design flaws. Recently I saw an example where a…
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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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Consider the source in health care data integration
The Atlantic, not typically a technical rag, recently presented an article by business and economics editor Megan McArdle on health care data integration entitled “Paging Dr. Luddite”. The article brings to a mass audience an understanding of both the importance and difficulty of data integration, but the title and general anti-healthcare-professional tone seem counterproductive.