Information Architecture As the Key To Effective Data Management

When I first started my career in IT leadership, I could not imagine ever needing a terabyte of storage. I figured a terabyte would take care of my organization's storage needs until my grandchildren were working in IT. And, it was a good thing that I would never need a terabyte of storage because storage was awfully expensive. Thankfully, the cost of storage has dropped dramatically because our need for storage keeps climbing. We just can't get enough. A terabyte? Even in my very simple business, we can blow through a terabyte in mere months. Three years ago we purchased... Read More»

A Lesson from a Pill

For me it has finally hit, an onslaught of physical things that make you realize that you are aging. Reading glasses, wrinkles, and a load of other things that make you truly understand that there is no going back to being 20. So, in response to some of these discomforts, I have added medications to my daily regimen, to try to assuage the inevitable, and make the transition into "old age" more comfortable. I don’t know if any of you have had the same experience, but finding just the “right drug fit” for some of these conditions can be a... Read More»

From Zero to SME in a few weeks

In a previous blog post, I mentioned the question of whether business analysts should be subject matter experts in the domain of the project. I personally don't think that BA's needs to be SME's as long as they have the ability to quickly pick up domain knowledge. This outlook was formed based on my background because every time I changed jobs, I entered a new domain and was still able to be effective. So instead of entering a discussion that rivals “BCS vs College Football Playoffs” and “expanding the field for the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament” for having a life... Read More»

5 Lessons on Customer Value

I have been slowly but surely completing a serious spring cleaning in the house - I'm talking every drawer, cupboard, closet, etc. and am experiencing the joy of determining what goes and what stays. I have tried to put some parameters together to assist me in determining what a few "cut off" points are, but it doesn't seem to be working. Things like "If you haven't touched it in 5 years, it gets donated" hasn't really helped as I'm living the "what if I'll need it within six months?" voice inside my head, so I'm not removing nearly as much... Read More»

Popping the Why Stack

If you ever wanted to test an adult's true understanding of how things work, put them in a long car ride to kindergarten with a five year old. "Dad, why is the sky blue?" "Because of the sunlight hitting the atmosphere." "Why" "Because as light hits the atmosphere, it starts to hit particles in the air and bounce around, causing us to see blue..." "Why" And so on until the five year old gets distracted and asks a different string of questions, or the adult runs to the limit of their understanding and tries desperately to change the subject. What... Read More»

Projects Don't Care if you have been Naughty or Nice

A friend of mine was telling me about a project meeting she attended last week that set her teeth on edge. The Project Manager introduced the purpose of the meeting was to discuss requirements for the project. She facilitated the discussion by asking everyone to describe their "wish list". Their what? That kind of perspective leads to the dysfunctional behavior that results in an exceedingly long and poorly thought out deliverables list. This particular project was conceived to introduce efficiencies by automating an outward data collection process. It's a cost savings project. The last thing you would want to do... Read More»

Mind The Gap

The London Underground is famous for the saying "Mind the Gap" which encourages passengers to watch out for the space between the subway cars and the platforms at many of its stations. Most projects have gaps, only these are the differences between the requirements that have been explicitly stated, and the items needed to successfully deliver the intended result of the project. The technique of gap analysis helps the project team avoid falling into the gaps that could cause the project to fail, such as forgetting necessary data. A project team I am working with right now is in the... Read More»

Project Management Survival Tools - Part B (Use Cases)

Good use of tools can still save your life (as a project manager)! As a project manager, you face many challenges in a project. Each of us can use all the help we can get. For this 2nd post on this subject I’d like to focus on the value of Use Cases. One of the challenges of specifying a new system, process, or product, is to capture the desired or required behaviors. These behaviors occur at very high levels of abstraction and at very detailed levels (and everything in between). A good use case describes the system’s behavior under various... Read More»