Business Intelligence Projects: Pick Sponsor Wisely

Business intelligence projects are popular and fairly straightforward to get approved at governance. However, survey data shows that being selective about sponsorship is critical to BI success. Choose your sponsor and steering team wisely, should you receive the nod for investment. ...

... "What raised the red flag for Burton, however, was that 40% of those polled said their business intelligence projects were owned by lower-level business executives. That isn't ideal, Burton said, because that group tends to have tactical rather than strategic roles ... " ...

Business intelligence projects fail without C-level ownership

Right Brain Project Management

I recently re-read Daniel Pink's book, A Whole New Mind. I noticed now that it's out on paperback, the subtitle changed from "Moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age" to "Why Right-Brainers will Rule the Future."

The latter is probably more accessible and gets to the heart of the book. The premise is that with more technical jobs being eliminated due to automation and offshore outsourcing, we're left clinging to the one thing that computers and offshore resources can't replace---the soft skills. It's not that offshore people don't have the capacity to do this, it's just not effective from a remote location.

The books specifically outlines Six Senses that are now required to compete in today's market (I'd add that these were always needed for effectiveness, but now it's a necessity for career survival). The Six Senses we need to build are:

1) Not just function, but DESIGN (the WOW factor)
2) Not just argument, but STORY (i.e. we need to be storytellers to make a good case)
3) Not just focus, but SYMPHONY (i.e. synthesis of complex relationships vs. heads-down analysis)
4) Not just logic, but EMPATHY (incidentally, the key trait in Daniel Goleman's Emotional Intelligence)
5) Not just seriousness, buy PLAY (fun leads to employee satisfaction, which leads to customer satisfaction and profits. Therefore, Fun=$ !)
6) Not just accumulation, but MEANING

FACT (not from the book, but relevant nonetheless): Per a recent management forum of 70 business schools, many of them are requiring less quantitative courses and more leadership courses. Also, a number of organizations are now recruiting design students instead of MBAs.

The key is that the logical, sequential left-brain stuff is still necessary, but we need to compliment it with the more contextual and feeling right-brain skills. With communication being 90% of a project manager's job, I'd say this directly applies to project managers as well.

Below is a link to Pink's book on Amazon...

Amazon.com: A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future: Books: Daniel Pink

Application Development Projects: Automated Monitoring ...

FDA uses automation to monitor the performance of distributed application development project teams and provide measures to sustain productivity. ...

... "CAST Application Intelligence Platform is not a burden to the development teams – all analysis is automated. CAST provides the FDA with an automated analysis and monitoring system that delivers productivity benefits to the developers while providing objective information back to management. When selecting a solution, the FDA found that CAST had the only product on the market that can analyze all the languages used in their application portfolio. With the insight provided to IT management on what is happening in application development, and the productivity gains that development can get using CAST, the FDA now sees a way to deliver immediate gains across the organization and turn development into a predicable business process." ...

Application Development Projects: Automated Monitoring: Via Cast Software: US FDA and DTCC Select CAST’s Application Intelligence Platform to Provide Better AD Governance ...

Project Management: Virtual Decision Making

Struggling with enabling and sustaining project decisions? Bill Thomas promotes effective decision-making through a process that considers the level of decision-making participation and measures performance. The decision roles of participants should be understood, documented, and monitored (helpful with compliance, such as SOX). Graphical visualization of key measures is recommended, in combination with the appropriate commentary to provide the color and texture of the business context. ...

... "Effective group decision making within performance management has always been a challenge, but traditional decision-making approaches do not consider the speed and complexity of dynamic virtual work teams regularly employed at this time. They also neglect recent compliance regulations that have a direct impact on defining current business processes. Ten years ago, an organization could employ loose guidelines and/or project management techniques because group decision making was less complicated. " ...

Via Business Intelligence Network: Decision Making and Risk within the Performance Management Process ...

IT Strategy Dream Job ...

Finally found my dream job ... SAP IT Strategy, Beer ... Only problem, it's complete. ... Andrea Stercken writes about the ERP modernization program at Krombacher Brewery, where the SAP suite was implemented to centralize systems and serve a broad set of standard business processes with transaction processing and business intelligence. ...

... "The brewers from Germany’s Siegerland have taken an important step along the way to their IT strategy with the new applications. At the end of 2005, Krombacher completed the conversion from SAP R/3 to mySAP ERP. " ...

IT Strategy Dream Job: Via SAPInfo: SAP in the Brewery ...

Business Intelligence Project: Prince2 Methodology ...

Business Intelligence Project: Prince2 Methodology: Via Computing: Mayor's office testing performance software ...

... "The LDA is using the technology as part of a data warehousing and business intelligence project run under public sector best-practice methodology Prince2. " ...

Project Portfolio Management: Business Intelligence Enables Visualization ...

Project Portfolio Management PPM vendors are increasingly bundling business intelligence components in their offerings, such as Business Engine's collaboration with Cognos. ...

Project Portfolio Management: Business Intelligence Enables Visualization: Via Business Engine: Business Engine Teams with Cognos to Deliver Business Intelligence Tailored to IT and Engineering Organizations: Global 2000 Companies Gain Greater Insight into Project-based Portfolios with Advanced Metrics, Dashboards and Reporting ...

... "BEN Business Intelligence embeds industry-leading business intelligence technology from Cognos, including Cognos ReportNet and Cognos PowerPlay, to provide IT and business users with powerful reporting and OLAP analysis through easy access to timely and accurate information. Business Engine recognizes the strategic importance of business intelligence and corporate performance management in helping enterprises gain greater value from their IT investments, align business goals and ultimately deliver solid results, said Ted Jandl, Area Vice President of Strategic Partners at Cognos. Coupling Cognos with Business Engine's leading Project Portfolio Management solution gives savvy corporate leaders the ability to make informed decisions about their business and technology investment portfolio while helping to drive enterprise agility in the face of a shifting economic landscape. " ...

Managing Business Intelligence (BI) Projects; A Primer

From Addison-Wesley comes a great article outlining a roadmap for managing BI projects. As the article points out, BI projects are not for the faint of heart.

It lays out preparation activities, key roles, and other tips and techniques. But even if you're not managing a BI project, there's great advice here for anyone managing a large scale technical project. Check it out...

A Business Intelligence Roadmap: Project Planning

SOA Governance: Best Practice Strategies Webinar ...

SOA Governance: Best Practice Strategies Webinar: Via Service Integrity: Real-Time Business Intelligence for Service Oriented Enterprises

Upcoming webinar explores best practices and strategy for SOA Service Oriented Architecture in leading enterprises ...

... "Service Integrity, a provider of real-time Business Intelligence (BI) software for Service-Oriented Architectures (SOA), and Systinet, the leader in SOA governance and lifecycle management, announced they will co-host a webinar, Creating a Policy and Practice Blueprint for SOA, on Tuesday, October 4. The online event will present best practices and strategies for building today's service-oriented enterprises, including the critical steps for establishing a system of record for SOA policies and how to secure real-time visibility into the implementation of best practices. " ...

Systinet is a leading software provider of the foundation for SOA governance and business service lifecycle management. Founded in 2000, Systinet's award-winning, proven, and standards-based products enable IT organizations to rapidly leverage existing technology investments, provide interoperability between heterogeneous systems, and better align business processes with IT. Customers receive the benefits of a simpler, faster, standards-based way to dramatically improve IT responsiveness and technology asset reuse, while maximizing the ROI for SOA. Systinet's customer base of over 150 Global 2000 clients includes Amazon.com, BMC Software, Interwoven, JP Morgan, Motorola, Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), and SAIC. Headquartered in Burlington, Mass., Systinet is a privately held company with over 100 employees.

Service Integrity provides patent-pending, real-time Business Intelligence (BI) software for Service-Oriented Architectures (SOA). As a consequence of implementing SOA, more business critical data is “in-flight” than ever, and it’s moving at the speed of light. Service Integrity’s SIFT™ software uniquely resolves the challenge of harnessing and leveraging Information-in-Motion™ to achieve optimal business execution. With SIFT, companies like Pfizer, Novell, and Fidelity National Financial achieve the insight, agility, and predictability they need to gain increased regulatory compliance, continuous risk management, and seamless operational performance. Service Integrity is headquartered in Boston, MA.

OnDemand Portfolio Management Solution: SMB Market ...

Via 3 Olive Solutions: on-demand project portfolio management solution ...

... "3 Olive Solutions develops Portfolio Intelligence™, the popular on-demand project portfolio management solution. Portfolio Intelligence™ is the solution of choice for mid-sized and small organizations or departments of larger companies such as the project management office (PMO) due to its affordability, quick implementations and easy-to-use methodology. Portfolio Intelligence™ gives executives and managers oversight for groupings of work efforts with its organization, control and decision support capabilities that result in increased business value from projects, better resource utilizations, and lower costs. " ...

Three Olive Solutions, LLC was founded with the mission of developing software solutions that help executives and managers be more effective leaders within their organizations. 3 Olive’s initial application, Portfolio Intelligence™, is an ondemand project portfolio management solution that is ideal for small and mid-sized organizations or departments within larger companies such as the project management office (PMO). Portfolio Intelligence™ is an affordable and easy-to-implement solution that enables executives and managers to organize, control and make better decisions on their work efforts resulting in higher business value, better resource utilizations, and lower costs.