By Karen Lopez on Tuesday, August 21, 2007 1:26 PM

Thank you for attending the CA Summer Webcast on Starting with More than a Blank Page.  At InfoAdvisors.com you'll find articles and videos about ERwin Data Modeler as well as tool-independent content.

You can sign up for our user discussion groups and create a member profile, if you'd like.

 

By Karen Lopez on Thursday, August 02, 2007 8:17 AM

I was helping a friend check out job listings at Amazon.com when I came across this listing for a Business Analyst:

Qualifications

 

 

The successful candidate must demonstrate the following:

• Outstanding attention to detail, problem solving, and analytical skills  - Check
• Excellent written and spoken communication  - Check
• Excellent communication skills at all levels with the ability to present information in a professional and mature manner - Check
• Ability to work effectively to tight deadlines in a fast-paced environment - Check
• Understanding of Linux or Unix operations systems desired. - Check
• 3-5 years of demonstrable experience in at least one of the following financial processing areas:  procurement, asset management, accounting, accounts payable, and/or lease management. - Check
• Knowledge of Information Technology, including computing, storage and networking equipment. - Check
• Strong skills in Microsoft Office Suite (i.e. Excel, Word, and Outlook) are required. - Check Experience working with ERP software systems (i.e. Oracle/Remedy) is a plus, as is the ability to mine data and maintain essential metrics using these applications. - Check
• Track record of success in a fast-paced environment. - Check
• Ability to lift and move up to 75 lbs and assist team members as needed in the receipt, transfer and disposal of assets, with accommodation. - Uh....No

I'm not sure my friend could lift and move up to 75 pounds, unassisted.  I'm hoping this is an error...or is that that BAs at Amazon are expected to pitch in and help move skids of books around on their down time?  I can see some recruiter busy screening candidates against that last one, rejecting all kinds of excellent candidates because they don't look strong enough.

 

I've laughed at insane requirements in job postings -- you've all seen them - "5 to 10 years deploying Windows Vista in corporate environments", "5 years hands-on experience with EA/Studio", etc.  But what's the weirdest/most outlandish requirement you've seen?

By Karen Lopez on Friday, July 27, 2007 8:35 AM

Do you count the time reading this blog as a break?  Wasting time?  Professional Development? If you boss came up to you right now as you are reading this, would you be tempted to minimize the window or to share it with her?

I know situations vary, but as "hired labour", I tend not to do a lot of professional development while at client sites, at least not during regular office hours, as many believe that consultants should be 100% nose-to-the-grindstone busy during all hours on site.  I agree, somewhat.  I do usually take some time first thing in the morning to catch up on overnight e-mails (off shoring has a huge impact on my e-mail schedule) and evenings to take care of less direct client work, if allowed and supported by my clients.  I'm usually working on projects that require travel away from home, so taking advantage of a more secure Internet connection is good, but the usual reason is that I'd much rather work at a real desk with a real desk chair than spend hours on a tiny hotel "desk" trying to get work done.

I came across this story by Information Week on work habits, focusing especially on work habits of younger versus older workers:

Hardly Working? Survey Exposes The Mind Of A Time Waster

Are you working hard or hardly working? A new report out Wednesday may shed some light on why employees waste 20% of their workdays and why that may not be such a bad thing.

Salary.com's 2007 Wasting Time Survey showed the average employee spends 1.7 hours of a typical 8.5-hour workday on activities unrelated to the job. Almost 35% of respondents said they spend time on the Internet for personal reasons, 20.3 said they socialize with co-workers, and 17% conduct personal business. Respondents also said they make personal calls and take long breaks to run errands. The third annual review was conducted with 2,000 employees across all job levels through America Online and Salary.com users in June and July.

The average worker wastes less time this year than last, but companies still pay billions for nothing in return.

It's a bit of a head scratch-er for me...I remember it was only 10 or 12 years ago when IT professionals actually went on breaks - coffee breaks, often for 30-40 minutes at a time.  We got up, went to a cafeteria or outside park bench, and sat and talked about anything but work.  Sometimes work topics we raised and either we extended the break, or someone was smart enough to get the conversation deferred until we were back in side.  To make matters even more complex, we did this again at lunch and in the afternoon.  Good consultants didn't bill for this time, but employees expected this to be treated as part of their work day.  They didn't punch in, but this break time was considered part of their work environment.  It wasn't sneaky and it wasn't hidden.  Typically the breaks were 20-30 minutes and lunch was 30-60 minutes, depending on the organizations policies.

I have not worked in an IT shop for a long time that practiced such formal break times.  Most breaks these days are less formal, in smaller groups, and just managed by a supervisor.  Some supervisors frown on any break time for any reason (you've worked for those guys, I'm sure), while others take breaks with their staff to discourage burn out and increase creativity.

What intrigued me most was this point about generational differences:

More than 63% of respondents admitted to wasting time at work, and younger workers waste more time than older ones. Employees between the ages of 20 and 29 waste about 2.1 hours a day. The average for employees ages 30 to 39 drops to 1.9 hours, while people between the ages of 40 and 49 waste just 1.4 hours daily.

Nearly 18% of employees say they waste time because they "don't have enough work to do." Almost 14% said their hours are too long. About 12% say they're underpaid and 11.1% say their work is not challenging and that is why they waste work time.

I wonder if the wasted time is in addition to any sort of formal breaks, or hidden time spent e-mailing jokes and reading up on some starlet's newest rehab revolving door?  I wonder if it is checking out InfoAdvisors.com or posting to our discussion groups?  I also wonder if the time wasting activity differs based on generation.  Is a Baby Boomer's paying of a gas bill counted as 5 minutes of wasted time, or would a Boomer likely treat that just part of the balance of work and life?  Is the 5 minutes a Gen Mer spends forwarding an e-mail of a You Tube video link to a friend counted towards waste or is that part of her work life balance?

If a Gen Yer reads an article on the costs and benefits of using a surrogate key, does he treat it as wasted time, training, or work?  How about a Boomer?

Certainly some managers feel that anything not directly applicable to the day's task at hand is a waste of time, but do you? 

By Karen Lopez on Friday, July 27, 2007 6:45 AM

www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2140512,00.aspEweek.com has an interesting article on the effects of generation gaps in today's workplace:

 From Gartner: The 40-Hour Workweek Era Is Ending

"The additional pressures of an aging population and skills shortages will lead to the adoption of digital free agency and flexible work structures as social, political and business necessities."

The effect of these changes will be felt throughout the employment life cycle. Organizations will be forced to redefine existing roles as well as craft new ones based on what can be realistically achieved in half the traditional workweek.

The report suggests that rather than adopt a draconian measure of cutting in half the working hours of all employees, employers that create 20-hour job descriptions will be in the best place to attract and retain the most qualified workers.

"The 20-hour-per-week job description is a relatively simple way of addressing a growing problem without radically restructuring well-established management models," said Prentic.

I know this sounds very radical, especially if you are currently slogging through a death march project right now, putting in 60 or 70 hours a week.  However, I do see Gartner's position on this fitting in well with the passing of defined benefit pension plans, one week vacation benefits, and five-year vesting in company benefits.

Ten or more years ago I saw the emergence of "flexible work" or "job sharing" targeted mostly at females with young children.  Some companies pulled it off, but most managers were Traditionalists or Early Boomers and treated these workers as workers-lite, instead of valuable professionals who needed some other work model for their current situations.

As a business owner, I can't imagine only working 20 hours a week, but I could definitely see it as a pre-retirement or even life long retirement strategy.  My current work model is to engage in a project, pour my entire life into for a few months or years, then take time off for my work-life balance.  I can do that, though, because I have few daily family obligations.

In my work with organizations hoping to recruit and maintain a Gen M, X, or Y workforce, I could see the revision of standard work weeks as a key solution to the generation gap between those still stuck in 1975 and those entering the workforce in 2005.  Life and work have changed... organizations haven't and they are paying for it with their younger, technical workforce.

Is your organizaton making changes to recruit and retain workers under the age of 35? Over the age of 55?  Anyone else?

By Karen Lopez on Thursday, July 19, 2007 3:56 PM

Embarcadero Technologies is offering an introductory, one hour webinar on Business Process Modelling and BPMN on Thursday, 26 July 2007.

If you are new to Business Process Modeling or like many, have been away from it long enough to have missed the introduction of the BPMN standard, it would be worth it for you to check out this webinar.

By Karen Lopez on Thursday, July 19, 2007 3:07 PM

Senior vice president of operations promoted to president and CEO

San Francisco - June 27, 2007 - Embarcadero Technologies, Inc. announced that the $200 million go-private transaction with Thoma Cressey Bravo has been completed. As a private company, Embarcadero will have the resources and flexibility to accelerate the development of its award-winning database management tools resulting in improved responsiveness to customer needs and a revitalized role as a leader in the database management industry.

By Karen Lopez on Wednesday, July 18, 2007 6:51 PM

Hannah Smalltree, over at SearchDataManagement.com, interviews Jill Dyché of Basline Consulting, via a podcast  on getting started with Data Governance.

One interesting fact that Ms. Dyché mentions is the result of a Gartner study that says that 90% of all first data governance efforts fail.  If that is true (and I have no reason to believe otherwise), we need to step back and ask what is being done incorrectly?  Jill tells us why this happens and what we can do to avoid being part of an unuseful, intellectual effort that further degrades confidence in our IT organization.

This podcast is made available in .mp3 format, so you can use your favourite MP3 player (even Windows Media Player) to listen.

By Karen Lopez on Wednesday, July 18, 2007 4:42 PM

Many of our readers may have spoken with DAMA-conference exhibitors Data Mirror at the last two DAMA conferences.  This week IBM and Data Mirror have announced a pending purchase by IBM:

IBM announced today that it plans to buy real-time data integration software vendor DataMirror Corp. to support its information on demand strategy -- and quickly had to refute analyst concerns about potential product overlaps.

 

The Markham, Canada-based software maker will enhance IBM's existing portfolio with a "change data capture" product that offers the ability to continuously monitor heterogeneous systems, sense changes, capture changed data and deliver that information in near real-time to other applications. This functionality helps organizations speed decision-making and enhance business processes, explained Paraic Sweeney, vice president, product management with IBM.

 

By Karen Lopez on Wednesday, June 20, 2007 1:49 PM

I just finished a whitepaper sponsored by Embarcadero Technologies on Collaborating with Developers and DBAs: 7 Easy Steps to an Easier Project, Better Product, and Stronger Team .  Registration is required.

In this paper, I discuss seven ways you can improve the performance of your teams, specifically with the technical users of your models.  I believe that we data and process architects are so swamped with work that we forget that in addition to the business, we have developers and DBAs as users, not just consumers, of our modeling deliverables. 

In addition, I've developed a presentation on this topic -- see my blog post prior to this one.  If you are interested in having me present on this topic at your company or at your local user group, please contact me at website@infoadvisors.com . I'd love to come visit.

I would appreciate feedback on this paper and presentation.  What did I miss?  Am I wrong on some of these?  In your experience, would these steps work?  Would your boss let you follow them?  Have you implemented these types of things?

Opinions, for or against, awaited.

 

By Karen Lopez on Monday, June 18, 2007 8:20 PM

On Tuesday 26 June 2007, I will be speaking at the Portland Oregon DAMA Chapter on Collaborating with Techs: Performance Improvement with Developers and DBAs.  This is a brand new presentation I've developed and Portland DAMA has been kind enough to be the first audience to see it.

So if you are in the Portland or Vancouver WA area, I'd love to get your input into the presentation.

I'm also giving my "Everything I know about Data Management I Learned from Amazon.com / Powells.com one that's a lot of fun.

See announcement below

Hope to see you there

Karen  speaking at DAMA Portland on 26 June 2007

        
Next Meeting:  Tuesday June 26th , 2007    
Subject

Working with Techies: Better Collaboration with Developers and DBAs

Karen Lopez

Schedule

 8:30 – 9:00 a.m.    Sign-in /coffee and pastries
 9:00 – 11:00 a.m.   Presentation

11:00 - 11:30 a.m.   Chapter News/Announcements

Where

Con-way

2055 NW Savier St

Portland, OR 97209

There is free parking at Con-way

Cost

Free for members!
$15 for non-members.
See the list of corporate members.

RSVP

E-mail VP-Communication by Thursday, June 21st

Abstract

Working with Techies: Better Collaboration with Developers and DBAs

An interactive workshop on increasing collaboration with developers, DBAs, and other technical IT staff.   Topics will include:

·       Working with the new generation of IT workers
·       Location, location, location
·       Throwing models over the wall
·       Resolving differences of opinion
·       Architecture versus model versus design
·       Proactive versus reactive methods
·       Removing obstacles to success
·       Building Trust
·       Each attendee will take away a portfolio of techniques and checklists for having easier projects, better products, and faster tasks.

 

I Learned Everything I Need To Know About Data Modeling from Amazon.com: An Overview of Really Useful Books that Aren't About Data Modeling    

Karen shares her passion in reading by giving an overview of really useful books for data architects who want to be:

·       Great team members
·       Well positioned in the workplace
·       Great communicators
·       Better Analysts
·       Attendees will also get the opportunity to nominate their favorite books.

Speaker

Bio

Speaker: Karen Lopez

Karen Lopez is a principal consultant at InfoAdvisors, Inc., a Toronto-based consulting firm. She has 20 years of experience in project and data management on large, multi-project programs.  She specializes in the practical application of data management principles. 

Karen is  frequent speaker at DAMA chapters and conferences around the world.  Her sessions are well attended and receive great reviews.  She is often invited to return to speak again on new topics.

She has been a speaker for:

§       DAMA Australia
§       DAMA MN*
§       DAMA Portland*
§       DAMA San Francisco
§       DAMA UK
§       IRMAC (Toronto)*
§       Albany EMUG
§       Dallas EMUG
§       New York City EMUG*

*Multiple events

Karen is a former president of the Information Resource Management Association of Canada (IRMAC), and was the 2006 recipient of the Gary Hadford Professional Achievement Award.  She is also the ListMistress and moderator of the InfoAdvisors Discussion Groups at www.infoadvisors.com.