28 23 9 43 3 26 1 306 38 98 58 34 15 62 4 35 5 10 1 1 12 5 4 3 20
|
Archive for the ‘Information Development’ Category
| |
|
Feedback Request: Do you have a MIKE2.0 Success Story to Share?
For the past few years, our team at MIKE2.0 has been actively soliciting, compiling and promoting best practices for enterprise information development. And this year, we want to hear from you!
Have you successfully used or applied MIKE2.0 concepts in a business or educational setting? This could include using any of our open source methodologies, how-to guides, open source solutions, supporting assets, or blog advice in an effort to improve information management.
If so, please share your experience with us in the comment section below, or email us at mike2@openmethodology.org. Community respondents will have a chance to be featured as a case study in future MIKE2.0 knowledge publications, so this is a great opportunity for exposure and to help make an impact improving enterprise information management across the globe.
Sincerely,
MIKE2.0 Community
|
| |
|
|
|
This Week’s Food for Thought:
Mobile BI: A New Frontier?
For years, the idea was greater than the execution. Then a product came along that changed the game and unleashed a flurry of apps and development activity.
Yes, I’m talking about the effect of the iPad on mobile BI, a subject I broached on this very blog a few weeks ago. And I’m not the only one noticing this trend. Nicole Laskowski recently wrote an interesting TechTarget piece on the adoption of mobile BI in the enterprise. According to Laskowski, “mobile BI is enjoying a surge in popularity. According to Gartner, 33% of the 1,364 organizations using BI tools it surveyed are planning to deploy mobile BI this year. That’s in addition to the 8% already using the technology.”
Read more.
The Value of Decommissioning Legacy Systems
Most organisations reward their project managers for achieving scope, within a given timeframe for a specified budget. While scope is usually measured in terms of user functions most projects usually include the decommissioning of legacy systems. Unfortunately it is the decommissioning step which is most often compromised in the final stages of any project.
Read more.
How to Build an Analytical Culture
The key to building an analytical culture is to make analytics easy to use, understand, and accessible. The easiest way to do this is to develop an analytical portal. The purpose of the analytical portal is to allow everyone in your organization to know, examine, and use the numbers without having to contact the accounting and information technology departments every time a report or numbers are needed. Your analytical portal should allow people to have access to 5 business intelligence tools.
Read more.
|
|
|
|
|
Category: Information Development
No Comments »
| |
|
University Collaboration with MIKE 2.0
At MIKE2.0, we strongly believe that there is a great opportunity to increase collaboration of IM practitioners with acadmic institutions. One can imagine collaboration at several levels, all for the benefit of the participants, the discipline of IM and ultimately customers and organisations.
We would like to establish the following cooperations:
- Undergraduate and graduate student team projects
- Individual master and PhD thesis projects
- Research collaboration with academic staff
Take a look at our list of current and past activities. If you have any questions or suggestions on how this program can fit in with your local school, please don’t hesitate to contact us.
Sincerely,
MIKE2.0 Community
|
| |
|
|
|
This Week’s Blogs for Thought:
What Could Derail Apple’s Charge in the Enterprise?
For a wide variety of reasons, not every enterprise is ready to embrace Applefication. Beyond the cost of buying and deploying new technologies, significant issues still to be addressed. As I look toward the future, consider a few things that may hinder Apple’s growth in the enterprise.
First, Apple may well nowhere to go but down. What’s more, the company might have a hard time meeting demand for its products, especially when natural disasters take place (read: Thailand) Beyond that, in a sense nothing has changed: Organizations that insist upon superfluous complexity will certainly have it. Buying iPads doesn’t fix broken companies.
Read more.
Data Virtualization: Going Beyond Traditional Data Integration to Achieve Business Agility
Judith R. Davis and Robert Eve have come together to put a definitive word out there on the emerging field of data virtualization. This is the first book ever on data virtualization. Data virtualization brings value to the seams of our enterprise – those gaps between the data warehouses, data marts, operational databases, master data hubs, big data hubs and query tools. It’s an empowering approach that is defined as “a data integration technique that provides complete, high-quality and actionable information through virtual integration of data across multiple, disparate internal and external data sources.
Read more.
CIOs Need to Measure the Right Things
If you’re a Chief Information Officer (CIO) there are three things that your organization expects of you: 1) keep everything running; 2) add new capabilities; and 3) do it all as cheaply as possible. The metrics that CIOs typically use to measure these things include keeping a count of the number of outages, number of projects delivered and budget variances. The problem with this approach is that it fails to take account of complexity.
Read more.
|
|
|
|
|
Category: Information Development
No Comments »
In Part V of this series, I provided an example of an organization in dire need of some Applefication. In this concluding part, I look at what could derail Apple’s charge in the enteprise.
Challenges and the Future
For a wide variety of reasons, not every enterprise is ready to embrace Applefication. Beyond the cost of buying and deploying new technologies, significant issues still to be addressed. As I look toward the future, consider a few things that may hinder Apple’s growth in the enterprise.
First, Apple may well nowhere to go but down. What’s more, the company might have a hard time meeting demand for its products, especially when natural disasters take place (read: Thailand) Beyond that, in a sense nothing has changed: Organizations that insist upon superfluous complexity will certainly have it. Buying iPads doesn’t fix broken companies.
More generally, as others have pointed out, culture eats strategy for lunch. It isn’t easy to convince old-school IT employees and departments that simple is better—when their jobs depend upon complex. And not every organization has the budget for pricier (if superior) iProducts. Sometimes, good enough is exactly that, particularly in cash-strapped and low-margin industries.
And let’s not forget forthcoming product introductions from companies like Microsoft. Now that Apple has led the way with tablets and smart phones, expect forthcoming improvements from more traditional enterprise vendors.
Platforms Guarantee Nothing
Perhaps the most significant challenge to Apple is Apple itself–specifically, the tendency for successful companies do the following:
- become complacent
- ignore The Innovator’s Dilemma
- misunderstand its ecosystem.
These first two have been well studied and documented. With respect to the third, Ron Adner recently wrote an excellent piece in HBR. To me, the key piece is this:
In the rush to match the pieces, most of Apple’s rivals have missed the critical connections that draw the entire ecosystem together into a coherent whole.
What if Apple loses touch with its ecosystem? Likely? No. Possible. You better believe it. Look at RIM. Some claim that RIM has really done nothing wrong; it has merely been surpassed. Today, its smartphone market share has dropped to 12 percent (although it’s probably much higher with enterprises.) More alarming, that number may plummet further.
Even if RIM develops sleek new product, the company’s apps are anything but cutting edge. Ecosystems are arguably just as important as the products they support.
Final Thoughts
As discussed in this series, Apple is firing on all cylinders these days. It clearly understands the power of its platform and ecosystem , the consumerization of IT, and the criticality of an optimal end-user experience.
The platform business model fundamentally differs from other, more internally based business models. A company can do everything “right” (read: strategy and execution) and still fall from grace because its ecosystem changes. To guarantee Apple’s continued success in the enterprise would be the acme of foolishness. In at least the short and mid terms, however, expect more large organizations to go Apple.
Tags: Apple, RIM
Category: Information Development
1 Comment »
|
A Structural Overview of MIKE 2.0
If you’re not already familiar, here is an intro to the structure of the MIKE2.0 methodology and associated content:
- A New Model for the Enterprise provides an intro rationale for MIKE2.0
- What is MIKE2.0? is a good basic intro to the methodology with some of the major diagrams and schematics
- Introduction to MIKE2.0 is a category of other introductory articles
- Mike 2.0 How To – provides a listing of basic articles of how to work with and understand the MIKE2.0 system and methodology.
- Alternative Release Methodologies describes current thinking about how the basic structure of MIKE2.0 can itself be modified and evolve. The site presently follows a hierarchical model with governance for major changes, though branching and other models could be contemplated.
We hope you find this of benefit and welcome any suggestions you may have to improve it.
Sincerely,
MIKE2.0 Community
|
| |
|
|
|
This Week’s Blogs for Thought:
Bringing together digital, cloud and big data
History is replete with examples where ideas are launched with great fanfare and yet fail while subsequent iterations of very similar ideas are hugely successful. The difference between a failed good idea and a success is often only a matter of a few subtle differences.
It can be argued that at any time there are just a few key trends which define technology support for business transformation and innovation in the industry as a whole.
Read more.
The Applification of the Enterprise, Part IV: An Example
In Part III of this series, I looked at how increasingly self-reliant employees are no longer tolerating many behind-the-times’ IT departments. In this part, I provide a more in-depth example of this type of organization.
It’s May of 2011 and I’m psyched. I have finally started working with my new client, a large healthcare organization based in the midwestern United States. Let’s call it Joel Hospital here, although it’s a pseudonym. Joel has a need for a consultant with my particular skills and, for reasons unbeknownst to me, its previous two consultants did not pan out.
Read more.
Communication, Not Tech, is #1 Job for CIOs
Whenever enterprises are asked about the greatest challenges facing IT, they invariably reply that it’s ensuring technology helps drive and change the business, not just polish existing processes to greater efficiency.
Read more.
|
|
|
|
|
Category: Information Development
No Comments »
| |
|
861 Articles and Counting!
MIKE2.0 is being continually updated by the community. Why not dive in and add your insight to one of the information management problems or solutions that is being worked on by the community?
Below are some of our latest wiki articles:
We hope you find our new article additions of benefit and welcome any suggestions you may have to improve them.
Sincerely,
MIKE2.0 Community
|
| |
|
|
|
This Week’s Blogs for Thought:
The Applification of the Enterprise: Part I
In early February of 2012, Halliburton, one of the world’s largest oilfield service companies, became the latest enterprise to abandon RIM’s BlackBerry. Halliburton’s new smartphone of choice: Apple’s iPhone.
Even two years ago, this would have been earth-shattering news. Companies of this size just didn’t buy Apple products. These days, however, announcements like these have almost become commonplace. That is, Halliburton is hardly alone in adopting the Apple’s iPhone throughout the company. In late 2011, Pfizer announced that it will purchase a rumored 37,000 iPads for its scientists and sales and manufacturing employees. In the same year, biotech giant Genentech announced that it had rolled out 30 company-specific apps in its own private app store.
Read more.
How to Share Bad Project News
In the spirit of the holiday season, I just wanted to bring some levity to the blog. I’ll leave it to you as the reader to discern if there is any applicable value to you in how you communicate.
Email to the Divisional Vice President
Subject: Weekly Status Report on Project Thames
Alan,
This was not a good week for the project.
23 of our nodes failed and we learned that there are limitations to how much the 3-node failover processes work. We’re still trying to figure out what we’re missing. Once we do, we’ll be in a better position to know when we can recover our data. Hopefully it doesn’t happen again. We also learned that the patch we were expecting from the vendor has been backburnered to 2013.
Read more.
The Last Resort: Custom Fields
For many years, I worked implementing different enterprise systems for organizations of all sizes. At some point during the project (hopefully earlier than later), someone would discover that the core application had no place to store a potentially key field. Against that backdrop, the team and I had a few choices .
Read more.
|
|
|
|
|
Category: Information Development
No Comments »
| |
|
Did You Know?
MIKE’s Integrated Content Repository brings together the open assets from the MIKE2.0 Methodology, shared assets available on the internet and internally held assets. The Integrated Content Repository is a virtual hub of assets that can be used by an Information Management community, some of which are publicly available and some of which are held internally.
Any organisation can follow the same approach and integrate their internally held assets to the open standard provided by MIKE2.0 in order to:
- Build community
- Create a common standard for Information Development
- Share leading intellectual property
- Promote a comprehensive and compelling set of offerings
- Collaborate with the business units to integrate messaging and coordinate sales activities
- Reduce costs through reuse and improve quality through known assets
The Integrated Content Repository is a true Enterprise 2.0 solution: it makes use of the collaborative, user-driven content built using Web 2.0 techniques and technologies on the MIKE2.0 site and incorporates it internally into the enterprise. The approach followed to build this repository is referred to as a mashup.
Feel free to try it out when you have a moment- we’re always open to new content ideas.
Sincerely,
MIKE2.0 Community
|
| |
|
|
|
This Week’s Blogs:
The Data War Room
The 1993 documentary The War Room tells the story of the 1992 US presidential campaign from a behind-the-scenes’ perspective. The film shows first-hand how Bill Clinton’s campaign team responded to different crises, including allegations of marital infidelity. While a bit dated today, it’s nonetheless a fascinating look into “rapid response” politics just when technology was starting to change traditional political media.
Today, we’re starting to see organizations set up their own data war rooms for essentially the same reasons: to respond to different crises and opportunities.
Read more.
Overcoming Information Overload
Information is a key asset for every organization, yet due to the rise of technology, web 2.0 and a general over abundance of raw data, many businesses are not equipped to make sense of it all.
How can managers overcome an age of “information overload” and begin to concentrate on the data that is most meaningful for the business? Based on your experience, do you have any tips to share?
Read more.
New Survey Finds Collaborative Technologies Can Improve Corporate Performance
A new McKinsey Quarterly report, The rise of the networked enterprise: Web 2.0 finds its payday, released just this week is proving to be a treasure chest of information on the value of collaborative technologies. This new release of a series of similar studies from McKinsey over the years comes out of a survey of over 3000 executives across a range of regions, industries and functional areas. It provides detailed information on business value and measurable benefits in multiple venues of collaboration: between employees, with customers, and with business partners. It also examines the link—and finds great correlations—between implementing collaborative technologies and corporate performance.
Read more.
|
|
|
|
|
Category: Information Development
No Comments »
Jans Aasman
Dr. Jans Aasman is CEO and President of Franz, a semantic web and enterprise technology solution provider. He started his career as an experimental and cognitive psychologist, earning his PhD in cognitive science with a detailed model of car driver behavior using Lisp and Soar.
Aasman has spent most of his professional life in telecommunications research, specializing in intelligent user interfaces and applied artificial intelligence projects. From 1995 to 2004, he was also a part-time professor in the Industrial Design department of the Technical University of Delft. Jans is currently the CEO of Franz Inc., the leading supplier of commercial, persistent, and scalable RDF database products that provide the storage layer for powerful reasoning and ontology modeling capabilities for Semantic Web applications.
Dr. Aasman has gained notoriety as a conference speaker at such events as Semantic Technologies Conference, International Semantic Web Conference, Java One, Linked Data Planet, INSA, GeoWeb, ICSC, RuleML and DEBS. He is also one of 15 CEOs interviewed in a new book, “Startup Best Practices”.
Connect with Jans.
Category: Information Development
No Comments »
| |
|
What is an Open Methodology Framework?
An Open Methodology Framework is a collaborative environment for building methods to solve complex issues impacting business, technology, and society. The best methodologies provide repeatable approaches on how to do things well based on established techniques. MIKE2.0′s Open Methodology Framework goes beyond the standards, techniques and best practices common to most methodologies with three objectives:
- To Encourage Collaborative User Engagement
- To Provide a Framework for Innovation
- To Balance Release Stability with Continuous Improvement
We believe that this approach provides a successful framework accomplishing things in a better and collaborative fashion. What’s more, this approach allows for concurrent focus on both method and detailed technology artifacts. The emphasis is on emerging areas in which current methods and technologies lack maturity.
The Open Methodology Framework will be extended over time to include other projects. Another example of an open methodology, is open-sustainability which applies many of these concepts to the area of sustainable development. Suggestions for other Open Methodology projects can be initiated on this article’s talk page.
We hope you find this of benefit and welcome any suggestions you may have to improve it.
Sincerely,
MIKE2.0 Community
|
| |
|
|
|
This Week’s Blogs for Thought:
On Google, Privacy and Data Management
Google’s new privacy policy is causing quite the stir. In a nutshell, effective March 1st of this year, the company is going to be integrating user information from its different products and services much more extensively than before. For instance, a YouTube video watched on Manchester United might cause an add for soccer jerseys to appear in Gmail.
Read more.
Talking Data Democratization
I spoke with Elissa Fink, the Chief Marketing Officer of Tableau Software about the democratization of business intelligence and the rise of well-performing, independent tools like Tableau. Here are some highlights of that conversation.
We both remember the days when the end user had no choice but to wait weeks, months or forever for IT to deliver every small report and every change to every small report. The end user was simply not empowered whatsoever. By the time the report came, it was far less valuable than when it was asked for. Even then, there was much further processing to be done on the data as the next step was to pull the data into Excel, where the real work would begin, including data cleansing. IT would go willfully blind on this and consequently users were inconsistently, and redundantly, recreating the work of their fellow users. Information was not a weapon. It was an afterthought.
Read more.
Kahneman and Data Management
Let’s try a test.
Organization ABC has deployed top-tier enterprise software. It has hired an army of expensive consultants who advise that people should follow specific business practices designed to maximize data quality.
Contrast ABC with organization XYZ. The latter’s management never upgraded its mainframe, bought “modern” apps and, to be frank, some of its business processes are antiquated.
Based on this information, which organization manages its data better?
Read more.
|
|
Category: Information Development
No Comments »
Google’s new privacy policy is causing quite the stir. In a nutshell, effective March 1st of this year, the company is going to be integrating user information from its different products and services much more extensively than before. For instance, a YouTube video watched on Manchester United might cause an add for soccer jerseys to appear in Gmail.
In The Age of the Platform, I write about how all of these products and services are in fact just planks on the Google platform.
Some people have a problem with this level of integration. I am not one of them, as I wrote recently. In today’s post, I’d like to discuss my non-objections from a data management perspective.
The privacy extremists question whether Google is being true to its stated corporate credo, Don’t be evil. They worry about what will happen to the information that Google collects on its users. To me, Google is merely doing what all companies should do–i.e., practice solid data management.
Google and Data Silos
Consider the following questions:
- Would it be better for Google not to collect and integrate as much user information as possible?
- Should Google maintain a bunch of disparate data silos?
- Should Google Maps not talk to Google Docs or Google Music?
- Should they all be different departments within Google?
If you’re Mark Zuckerberg or Tim Cook, then the answers to these questions are yes. You don’t want Google to succeed. If you’re a Google investor, employee, or vendor, though, the answer is an unequivocal no. Google is Google because of many reasons including brilliant employees, a cool corporate culture, and remarkable technology. But all of that wouldn’t matter if Google didn’t manage its data well.
Period.
Understanding the Hate
Many Google detractors simply envy what Google does so well–and so much better than other organizations. Yes, I’m talking about data management. Don’t think for a minute that many of these same people aren’t trying to figure out how to do exactly what Google is doing–or learn from Larry and Sergey.
No doubt that this envy extends to technology. As a web-native company, Google probably doesn’t have a great deal of spaghetti architecture running behind the scenes. 1960s mainframes? Please. Google played leapfrog and embraced the cloud long before many CIOs even heard the term.
Simon Says
If Yahoo! had the ability to manage its data as well as Google, then perhaps the dot-com leftover might be doing better that it has been over the last five years.
If you truly dislike what Google is doing as a consumer, then use Bing, Yahoo! Mail, MapQuest, and other alternatives to Google products. That’s your choice as an individual. As a company, however, it’s hard to argue with Google’s results. Dislike the company if you must, but you can’t help but admire how the company manages its data.
Feedback
What say you?
Tags: Google
Category: Information Development
1 Comment »
For the past few years, our team at MIKE2.0 has been actively soliciting, compiling and promoting best practices for enterprise information development. And this year, we want to hear from you!
Have you successfully used or applied MIKE2.0 concepts in a business or educational setting? This could include using any of our open source methodologies, how-to guides, open source solutions, supporting assets, or blog advice in an effort to improve information management.
If so, please share your experience with us in the comment section below, or email us at mike2@openmethodology.org. Community respondents will have a chance to be featured as a case study in future MIKE2.0 knowledge publications, so this is a great opportunity for exposure and to help make an impact improving enterprise information management across the globe.
Category: Information Development
1 Comment »
|
TODAY: Thu, May 23, 2013 May2013| S | M | T | W | T | F | S |
|---|
|
| 28 | 29 | 30 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 |
| 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 |
| 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 |
| 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 |
| 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 1 |
7 6 8 8 8 8 10 11 8 9 10 9 9 10 13 15 14 14 15 20 20 18 17 18 17 18 16 13 15 13 14 15 12 10 7 2 8 4 1 1 3 2 2 2 1 2 2 4 2 2 1 2 4 9 9 1
|
