Business Intelligence in Sailing Application

Sailing is known for its leverage of technology in boat design. Here's neat application of business intelligence integration (courtesy of SAP) with external services to drive dashboard visualizations and track performance in the race, the 2009 SAP 5O5 World Championship. ...

... "Business Objects business intelligence (BI) solutions will help competing teams develop their strategy, evaluate results at the end of each racing day and use that insight to hone their strategy for the next leg of the race. " ...

Via SAP: 2009 SAP 5O5 World Sailing Championship

Business Concept in Project Proposals

Complementing quantitative information with the qualitative perspective of your project proposal could be just the edge that your project's business case needs. Think sketches, graphics, or pictures, not numbers. Team Doblin offers advice on positioning your ideas and concepts. ...

... "These qualitative sketches allow business leaders to experience the concepts on a visceral level, and complement the usual projections (quantitative sketches) concerning variables like market size, rate of adoption and return on investment. " ...

Via Doblin: Business Concept Development (PDF)

Visualize the Crisis

Short vid on the credit crisis ...


The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

Visioning with the Box

I've done a lot of visioning over the years - diverging and converging ... I like this vision box approach from the agile methodology and hope to give it a try in the near future. It could be a good way to involve all team members and create energy and momentum in the project initiation process. ...

... "The basic concept is straightforward: If your new product was marketed in a box, like cereal or consumer electronics, what would be the marketing copy on the box? What product features, benefits, and attributes would you highlight on the box that would attract shoppers and convince them to buy your product? " ...

Via TechRepublic: Define the project vision

Visualize Before You Build

Here's an approach to IT projects that involves visualizing the business software deliverable before building it. ...



Link: iRise

Enabling Business Analysts to Visualize Information

Through the acquisition of Business Objects, SAP is enabling its user base to realize the power of data visualization. This product offering comes with templates to jump-start business analysts and accelerate their time to value. ...

... "Pre-loaded in Xcelsius Present are ten ready-to-use data visualization templates, allowing first-time Xcelsius Present users to immediately use and benefit from the solution. These templates are tailored for specific business functions, such as human resources, sales, marketing, finance and accounting, as well as different vertical segments like government and education. Business users can simply paste their existing business data into Xcelsius Present templates, create visually compelling models and then share them via Microsoft Office documents. " ...

Via Business Objects: Bring Business Data to Life

Illustrate Business Concepts

Dan Roam demonstrates visual thinking, which can be a useful and simple technique when trying to work yourself past challenges on a project. ...



Dan's blog.

SAP Project Managment Matures

SAP uses customer input to shape the future of its project management software capabilities in cProject module. ...

... "When it comes to functionality, cProjects 4.5 is a winner in the areas of multi-project and resource management. For example, the new Multi-Project Monitor displays several projects, including their relationships, in graphical form and therefore portrays the business dependencies, for example between the main project and sub-projects. " ...

Via SAP INFO: Ramp-up process for cProjects 4.5

Visualize Project Schedule in Excel

Tips on visual techniques of project gantt charts in Microsoft Excel. ...

Seeing the Project Deliverable

Sometimes, on a project, the deliverable cannot be visualized until the end. ...

Visualization and Analytics: Web 2.0

Check out Gapminder's visualization tool, now owned by Google. See link for time-delay view of country life expectancy and Per Capita income. Press play button to repeat visualization. ...

... "Gapminder's Trendalyzer software unveils the beauty of statistics by converting boring numbers into enjoyable interactive animations. We believe that Google's acquisition of Trendalyzer will speed up the achievement of this noble goal. " ...

Via Gapminder: Analysis Software

Visualization Map: Global Blogosphere

See visual map of the global blogosphere in video ...

Business Strategy: Align Objectives and Execute

IBM launches new software that enables workers and managers throughout an organization to align their personal and departmental objectives with business strategy and drive execution of their workplace activities ...

Business Strategy: Align Objectives and Execute: Via IBM: IBM Software Helps Employees at All Levels Align Their Objectives With Company Strategy ...

... "According to feedback from IBM's customers and partners, more companies are recognizing that while they have lots of data and a sound business strategy, the execution of the strategy needs improvement. IBM Workplace for Business Strategy Execution helps employees understand their company's strategy in concrete terms, focus on what is important, and remain current on status and risks. A department leader can use IBM Workplace for Business Strategy Execution to clearly communicate team objectives and how they fit into the company's strategy; link to and monitor internal and external dependencies that could affect the ability to reach objectives; track progress toward the objectives though intuitive scorecards and dashboards; and initiate actions to correct gaps in performance. " ...

PMThink references on strategy and alignment:

• Achieve Strategy Execution: Accelerate Plan Funding Support


• Business Continuity Project: Key Part of IT Strategy ...


• Business IT Alignment: Business-Relevant Metrics


• Business IT Strategy: Successful Alignment


• Governance Alignment: Project Portfolio Management (PPM)


• IT Alignment: Cost Benefit Analysis ...


• IT Governance: SAP ESA Strategy


• IT Strategy: Motorola Exec Podcast ...


• ITIL: IT Service Catalog: Alignment Focal Point ...


• Microsoft Framework: Business IT Alignment


• PMO Role: Align Business and IT ...


• Project Failure: A Success Strategy


• Project Management Strategy Integration Conference December2005


• PublicSector CIO: Enterprise View IT Strategy


• Software Aligns Project Management With Enterprise Strategy: Enhanced Portfolio Analytics ...


• Strategic Alignment: Project Portfolio


• Strategy: Visualize the Design ...

ITPortfolio: Markowitz Efficient Frontier Application

There are a variety of applications of Markowitz's efficient frontier to information technology IT portfolio management. Some EPM software packages incorporate the Markowitz technique to be used to visualize the various information technology portfolio combinations in a frontier graph. The jury is still out, though, on its suitability to IT portfolios as compared to traditional financial portfolios. ...

Via Chief Project Officer: The Efficient Frontier Technique for Analyzing Project Portfolio Management

... "The Efficient Frontier simplifies a complex Portfolio Management problem to highlight and clarify some basic questions: scarcity, efficiency, tradeoffs, opportunity cost and the value of breaking the constraints. " ...

Additional resources on the efficient frontier approach to project portfolio management:

Markowitz efficient frontier definition: Via Forbes Financial Glossary: The graphical depiction of the Markowitz efficient set of portfolios representing the boundary of the set of feasible portfolios that have the maximum return for a given level of risk.

Modern Portfolio Theory: Driving project portfolio management with investment techniques: Via IBM Rational: The closer a portfolio is to the Efficient Frontier the closer it is to being efficient, which means: For its level of return, there is no other portfolio with less risk, or for its level of risk, there is no other portfolio with more value.

IT portfolio management – A banker’s perspective on IT: Via Department of Mathematics at the Vrije Universiteit: However, there is a precondition attached to Markowitz’s theory that presents problems when the theory is applied to IT portfolios: the marketability of stocks and shares. MPT concentrates on finding the right balance between risk and return. Theoretically, in MPT there is a curve – the efficient frontier – of optimal expected return for a given risk.

Strategy: Visualize the Design ...

Strategy: Visualize the Design: Strategy by Design, Via Fast Company ...

Article on powerful techniques to describe and document strategy ...

... "People need to have a visceral understanding -- an image in their minds -- of why you've chosen a certain strategy and what you're attempting to create with it. Design is ideally suited to this endeavor. It can't help but create tangible, real outcomes." ...