by Christopher Elfner

Most issues identified are poorly defined and cannot be addressed without answering many questions.  I was once asked by a project manager, “What are all the unknowns?”  Of course, we didn’t know.

Addressing these poorly defined issues can be a daunting and challenging task.  The key is to break down them down into small, manageable questions that can be answered and acted upon.  They may be many questions influencing the issue, so the real trick is finding the right questions.  No one is grading you, so if you are answering the wrong questions, your actions may also be wrong.

Let’s say we want to improve Customer Satisfaction.  Our instincts may tell us that we have annoying salespeople, poor quality products, and long delivery delays.  But what is annoying, what is poor quality, and what is a long delay?  We could investigate the average length of time each salesperson keeps a customer, number of warranty claims by product, and on-time deliveries.  This information will validate (or invalidate) our instincts.  If we were wrong, we will need to ask other questions until we find out why we have a customer satisfaction issue.  Only then should actions be taken to improve customer satisfaction.

How do you qualify your questions?  Or do you just get answers?  Or do you manage from the gut?

Next time someone asks you a poorly defined question ask why…and keep asking why until it is no longer poorly defined

In Business Intelligence (BI), it isn’t about the tools you use. It’s about the information that helps people in our organizations know the next most important, most profitable thing to go DO.

Any decent set of tools will work fine. Don’t start your BI program with a tool selection effort. It should be all about the business, and how to drive value. Tools will come and go. The business value is what will be there for the long haul.

A while back I had the chance to visit the company where I built my first data warehouse. It is a “tiny little division” of a great big greeting card company. Using much the same star schema that we developed back in about 1995, they had added almost immeasurable business value over the years. They were doing it right. While they had added some new tools to the old iSeries (AS/400) server, mostly in the form of Microsoft Analysis Services, their focus is always on the business.

The data model wasn’t perfect. The Extract, Transform, and Load (ETL) code was custom-written in RPG. They didn’t have every latest data visualization/reporting tool. But they have very happy and appreciative users, who are increasing sales, reducing costs, and freeing up cash every day – even 15 years later. I think their secret is that IT has worked REALLY HARD over the years to align with the business, and make sure they are delivering business value all the time.

What can each of us do today, that builds on this great example?

by Larry Overstreet