by Rob Drysdale, InfoAdvisors

Having been involved in projects for over 20 years now, I've seen the working relationship between IT groups and the business and it seems that in most organizations it's dysfunctional.  I ran across a blog post recently by Susan Cramm entitled How IT Smart Is Your Organization.  The author talks about the fact that there are great technologies out there right now that could benefit businesses.  The problem as she states it is:

"...all that potential will never materialize as long as business leaders continue to behave as if IT is something that is done to them rather than by them."

I think this is one of the largest problems with the working relationship between the business and IT.  Many organizations believe that the IT group is off on their own and that they don't need to manage them.  The problem is that they need to look at them as they would any other service provider.  That they need to explicitly detail what they want, manage the development, testing, delivery, etc.  As Cramm points out in her blog post most organizations have a separate Finance Department and Human Resource Department.  But they still know how to create and manage their own budget and their own people.

I worked with an organization that was very good at vendor management and construction when it was part of their normal work.  They made sure they planned the project, did proper engineered drawings, contracted with other organizations to build it, provided ongoing inspection and oversight during construction and tested it.  When it came to the IT projects, they didn't understand how important those same planning and construction techniques were to them.  I think that there was this belief in the company that they didn't know about IT so they didn't want to manage it.  They believed that you could broadly sketch out some high-level requirements and that the IT groups could build a system that met all their needs based on that.  Well guess what?  It didn't work.  Worse yet, there was usually a business case attached to the project that included benefits (usually a reduction of staffing levels) to pay for it and even though the project didn't deliver what it was supposed to the business was still supposed to give up staff.

After having IT projects fail with their internal IT departments, it's no wonder that business executives looked at third party vendors as the way to deliver successful projects.  But did it work.  No.  And why not?  Because the business people didn't change their view on how to manage and participate in these projects.  They continued to believe that someone else can come up with the solution even if they don't tell them exactly what they want and need.

Until business sponsors and executives figure out that it really is their project, their deliverables, their money being spent, their benefits being created, there will always be IT project failure.

At Enterprise Data World 2010, I will be presenting on how to automate management of reference data, enumerations, and other data instances, especially for situations where a data architect has chosen a more generalized data modeling approach.

Why this topic? I believe that data architects should be managing or at least monitoring reference data throughout the development process, including production.  Given the sheer volume of reference data, we need tools and techniques that go beyond writing up a data quality/integrity requirement and hoping someone takes care of it.

Karen Lopez
Sr. Project Manager
InfoAdvisors

Wednesday, March 17, 2010
03:15 PM - 04:15 PM

Level: 
Intermediate

Do you leave the management of reference data, codes, and enumerations up to developers or users? If so, you could be adding more risk than you are aware of. In this presentation, Karen Lopez demonstrates tools and techniques for managing reference data and codes. Includes 10 success tips for keeping models and code values in sync.

Topics will include:

• Who should manage these?
• How should they be managed?
• How do we monitor their use?

by Rob Drysdale, InfoAdvisors

I've been seeing a lot of articles and blog posts about the relationship between the business and IT.  Last year while attending Enterprise Data World it was interesting how many people were talking about how dysfunctional their relationships are with the business.  So it got me to thinking that we should put more of an emphasis on it and talk about it.  So I'm speaking about it at EDW 2010 in my session on Sunday, March 14th.  I've called it "Getting What You Deserve: 7 Steps to Gain Respect in Your Organization".  But I've noticed that there are other topics and discussions around this and I think that's great because it's so important.  In particular, I noticed that Graeme Simsion will be talking about "What The Business Wants" during a keynote session.

We all need to think about the relationships we have at work and what are we doing about them to make them better.  I think too much energy and effort is wasted because both sides aren't working in harmony.  This is just a quick post to put the topic out there, but I'll be doing a couple of blog posts in the next few days about where I think some of the problems are and what we can be doing about it.

We're looking forward to seeing everyone at EDW 2010 next week in San Francisco.

Brian Aker of MySQL fame gave a 10 minute lighting talk about about the NoSQL movement at the Nov 2009 OpenSQLCamp in Portland, OR.

If you have not heard the term NoSQL, you might want to peruse these articles first to catch up on the lingo:

NoSQL on Wikipedia

MapReduce on Wikipedia

ACID on Wikipedia

And just so that you know, NoSQL isn’t really about SQL, but about non-relational databases.

Brian Aker on NoSQL

If you’d like to see the slides better, they are available here:

As I hear more about NoSQL, I know that there are some great thoughts there, for certain types of data storage needs. So I’m not anti-NoSQL (I believe that’s a double negative). I’m hoping to chat about NoSQL ideas at Enterprise Data World next week.

Enterprise Data World is coming in just over a week and I’m really looking forward to it.  As I tweeted just a few days  ago (and seconded by Alec Sharp):

Psyched about #edw10. Part data management revival, part training, party therapy.

With apologies to Mr. Letterman, my Top 10 Things I’m Looking Forward to at EDW10

10.  Attending what I think is my 14th DAMA Conference.  That’s a lot of networking.  A lot of meals.  A lot of sitting in the lobby, sharing stories, laughs, and silly thoughts.  Oh, and solving the world’s data problems.

9. Catching up with the many repeat-attendees – good friends whom I first met at a DAMA event in previous years.

8. Hearing how organizations are bringing value to their information resources.

7. Hearing how organizations are still bringing value to their information resources with fewer staff and limited budgets.

6. Talking to product representatives from organizations who support the conference…and offer amazing tools to help us succeed.

5. Meeting members from our community here at InfoAdvisors, in person.  I’ve known some of you for more than 15 years and it’s nice to get a chance to thank you for for contributions, face to face.

4. Hearing John Zachman talk about airplanes, frameworks, and life.  For the 325th time.  And it never gets old.

3. Meeting with industry thought leaders.

2. Networking with the best and the brightest of our profession.

1. Learning from others, no matter what hat they wear or how many years they’ve been working in the field.  I learn something new during every session, every break, every keynote.  I can’t wait.

What are you looking forward to at #EDW10?