Much like last year’s list, these books all pretty much fall within the data management, enterprise architecture, and IT management topics.  The intent here is that once I’m done reading each book, I will write up my thoughts and opinions to share them with you through a book report post.  Since I’m way behind in writing the book reports for last year’s list, I wouldn’t expect to see anything from this list until probably sometime in the spring.  However, I have given myself a little bit of a head start this year as I’ve already read a few of the books in this year’s list.

As I did last year, I am going to provide a short disclaimer so that everyone knows the rules I’m following for this reading list.  For the books that I haven’t already read yet, I do not intend to read them in any specific order.  I’ve listed the books in alphabetical order so that I don’t imply favoritism towards any author.  Also, I do not personally know any of these authors, nor do I own any signed copies.  I have purchased each of these books with my own money; they are not publisher comps or author galleys.  Finally, I reserve the right to change my mind and swap out a book or two as other new and interesting books are released throughout the year.

So, without further ado, here is the second annual edition of the Data Management Wonk Reading List.

———————————————————————————

	101 Lightbulb Moments in Data Management: Tales from the Data Roundtable – Phil Simon, Dylan Jones, Jim Harris, Jill Dyché, Joyce Norris-Montanari, David Loshin, Rich Murnane Given the technology space in which I make my living, it would have been completely irresponsible of me to not read this book as soon as it came out. It’s a great book written by a solid list of data management rock stars.  I’ll write the book report for this book as soon as I can, but don’t wait for me.  If you are a data management professional, you should get and read this book ASAP.  You won’t regret the time or the money.
	Agile Analytics: A Value-Driven Approach to Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing – Ken W. Collier "Agile" is one of those terms for me that has really been watered down over the years, so much so that I haven’t been getting too excited about "Agile" books in general for a while now.  However, the tag line on this one grabbed my attention, "A Value-Driven Approach to Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing."  I am all about "Value" when it comes to data and analytics. Looking at the author’s website, I found a small slice of serendipity.  He has the following quote which speaks to my statement above on the “Agile” term, I fear that, “agile as the latest magic bullet” has crossed the chasm, but that “agile as a different way of behaving” has not." – Ken Collier With this, I know that he understands his audience and the environment that we are all working in. I also see that there are two forwards to the book, one from Jim Highsmith and another from Wayne Eckerson.  This adds quite a bit of clout to Mr. Collier’s work (at least to me).  He is also speaking at the TDWI conference in Feb. of this year on Agile Data Warehousing, so many others have obviously found value in his work.
	Art of Enterprise Information Architecture, The: A Systems-Based Approach for Unlocking Business Insight – Mario Godinez, Eberhard Hechler, Klaus Koenig, Steve Lockwood, Martin Oberhofer, and Michael Schroeck Basically, I bought this book from a vendor at a conference last year (at a heavy discount on the last day) based only on the title and a quick scan to the table of contents. The book begins with a handful of chapters that define enterprise information architecture and its supporting concepts, such as data domains, information governance and security, along with conceptual and logical views, component models, and operational model.  It then moves on to information architecture topics like cloud computing, meta data management, master data management, and dynamic warehousing. Of course, this is an IBM-sponsored book, so I have total faith that it will discuss which IBM products align with the problem spaces defined within.  IBM isn’t a big part of my world so hopefully the authors keep this kind of stuff to a minimum.
	DAMA Guide to the Data Management Body of Knowledge, The (DAMA-DMBOK) – DAMA International The good folks at DAMA International have created this book to add structure to the world of data management.  They have organized the field into 10 core functions, such as data governance, data quality management, and data security management, to name a few.  Within each function are numerous activities that make up the function.  The bulk of the book is spent describing each level in the structure in detail. I’ve found this structure to be very helpful in communicating data management concepts with others, both on the business side and within IT. It’s not an easy book to sit down and read, but it has a tremendous amount of information that can be quickly put to use within your organization.
	Data Analysis Using SQL and Excel – Gordon S. Linoff This book focuses on three key tasks to “effectively transform data into actionable information: retrieving data with SQL, presenting data with Excel, and understanding statistics as the foundation of data analysis.” The bulk of this book looks like it would make a great gift to a business analyst in your life that wants to focus on the data side of things.  The first couple of chapters are nothing more than primers for SQL and database tables, and the third chapter covers some very basic data analysis concepts.  From there, the book starts delving into different types of data analysis such as geography, time series, event analysis, and market basket analysis; worthwhile things to have in your tool belt. Finally, about three-fourths of the way through the book, the author digs into data mining and the various models that can be built using standard relational databases and SQL. Yes, there are lots of really cool analytics tools out there (cooler than Excel anyway), but not everyone has access to those tools.  However, most business people have Excel on their workstations and access to one or more databases.  This book is for those folks.
	DW 2.0: The Architecture for the Next Generation of Data Warehousing – William H. Inmon, Derek Strauss, Genia Neushloss I read the 1st edition of Mr. Inmon’s “Building the Data Warehouse” back in the mid-90’s and I’ve read quite a few of his other books as well since then.  Did you know that he’s written over 60 books?  Talk about prolific. The story behind this book is that Mr. Inmon was frustrated (extremely?)that the data warehouse tool vendors had hijacked the term “data warehouse” and morphed it into whatever was needed to sell their own product.  He then set out to refine and update his vision of what the data warehouse is (and its associated architecture) and called it “DW2.0” (which he then trade marked so that no one could ever hijack it again). I have already read this book.  The biggest differences in his latest definition of the data warehouse is that he incorporates both unstructured data and data lifecycle management to define a complete (?) architecture rather than just a really big database. As a slight aside, try not to get caught up in the whole Kimball vs. Inmon thing.  It really is a waste of one’s energy.  The two approaches are very complementary; I’ve been implementing solutions that are a blend of both Inmon and Kimball for over 10 years now.
	Enterprise Architecture As Strategy: Creating a Foundation for Business Execution – Jeanne W. Ross, Peter Weill, David Robertson I read “IT Savvy” by Mr. Ross and Ms. Weill from last year’s reading list.  I got so many implementable ideas from that book that I went out and bought their other two titles (this one on Enterprise Architecture and the other on IT Governance (see below)). I’m particularly interested in this one because I feel that it will more closely align with my present responsibilities and have that much more great info that I can apply right away.  I’ll let you know how well this book hits that mark once I’ve finished it.
	Event-Driven Architecture: How SOA Enables the Real-Time Enterprise – Hugh Taylor, Angela Yochem, Les Phillips, Frank Martinez I’m not just a data guy.  I really love the enterprise architecture aspects of my job as well, and I still look for any good excuse to code.  SOA/web services, simple/complex event processing, event stream processing, and messaging projects are just plain fun. This book covers that entire spectrum of technologies, as well as discussing case studies that show how and where they add business value.
	Executing Data Quality Projects: Ten Steps to Quality Data and Trusted Information – Danette McGilvray Who doesn’t want to have access to a framework for implementing data quality within an organization, especially one that can be done in 10 steps.  Mr. Deming has his 14 points.  Mr. English has created a set of 20 steps – from Improving Data Warehouse and Business Information Quality (I haven’t yet read his more current tome Information Quality Applied so I’m not quite sure how many steps he has now, but it looked like a lot). To be fair, Ms. McGilvray’s 10 steps are high-level process steps, so there is still a lot of work to be done within each step, but you should have expected that right?  What I like about this is that it appears to be a practical book that assumes that you’ve already learned about data quality from somewhere else (Mr. English perhaps, or maybe Mr. Loshin?), so she doesn’t spend a lot of time on that stuff.  This book shows you how to apply that theory to the data quality opportunities that you have in front of you right now.
	IT Governance: How Top Performers Manage IT Decision Rights for Superior Results – Peter Weill, Jeanne Ross This was actually Mr. Weill and Ms. Ross’ first book together, written back in 2004.  However, it is the last of their three books that I will have read.  It seems that I am reading them backwards from their publishing date (not on purpose mind you; it’s just how that worked out). The theme throughout all three of their books is that of getting the IT projects and resources efficiently and effectively aligned with business objectives and strategy. Governance in the data management world is crucial to the success of all business intelligence initiatives.  I’m looking for the parallels between IT governance and data governance.
	Kimball Group Reader, The: Relentlessly Practical Tools for Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence – Ralph Kimball, Margy Ross, Warren Thornthwaite, Joy Mundy, Bob Becker Never mind that most (all?) of the information within this book can be found online, people still went out and bought this book in droves.  I bought it simply because I prefer reading books (go figure). Over the years, I have gone to the Kimball University website to review their Design Tips and I always seem to either learn something new or be reminded of something that I had forgotten.  And the old articles from DBMS Magazine and Intelligent Enterprise are worthy of re-reading again and again (over a span of years of course). Anyway, this book collects all of that great information into a single place, and that by itself was worth the cost of paying for stuff that I’ve already read before, multiple times.
	Making Enterprise Information Management (EIM) Work for Business: A Guide to Understanding Information as an Asset – John Ladley I picked up this book at the same conference mentioned above for the same heavy discount.  It was worth the extra weight in my bag on the flight home. This is another one of those sweet-spot books for me.  This discusses what Enterprise Information Management (EIM) is and how business value is realized by actively managing data as an asset. Mr. Ladley has written this book for the business executives and middle managers rather than the technical folks.  I like that.  From a technical perspective, there are plenty of resources available to educate us technical folks.  However, as a technical person, improving your ability to communicate these concepts to the business folks is key to your success.  Read it with this end-goal in mind and you will gain a ton of new insight.  This is valuable to both you and your company.
	Who Owns the Data? Using Internal Customer Relationship Management to Improve Business and IT Integration – Frank L. Eichorn When I first came across this book, I assumed it to be about data stewardship and ownership.  Of course the book’s tagline set me straight once I actually started looking into the book; it’s another business and IT alignment book targeted at the business executive. I love these type of books.  I just wish more business executives and managers would actually read these things.  I read them for perspective, but they are the ones that have the most to gain from them. It’s not a very big book; probably a weekender for most.  As I stated previously, as a technical person, having this perspective is valuable to both you and your company.
	Why New Systems Fail: An Insider’s Guide to Successful IT Projects – Phil Simon When I see this title, I think of big ERP implementation failures.  Having had the good fortune to NOT have been an active participant on a major system conversion project like that, I have my outsider’s thoughts and opinions on why these things didn’t work out as originally intended, but I don’t have true first-hand knowledge. However, after poking through the TOC and scanning the meat of the book, I suspect that I’ll find that there is a very significant amount of overlap of failed ERP implementations to that of failed data warehouse and business intelligence projects.  Let’s take a look, shall we.  There are discussions on vendor selection, contracts, roles and responsibilities, outside consultants, documentation… Yep, this is as much a data management book as any of the others in this list.  My first clue should have been that is was written by Mr. Simon.  Silly me.

———————————————————————————

Well, that’s it for another year.  If you’ve found it valuable, please consider sharing it with your peers using one or more of the social networking buttons below.  To receive updates when new articles are posted on this site, please consider subscribing to the RSS feed or email using the appropriate buttons in the top-right corner of this page.  As always, I appreciate your continued support.

Disclosure – The links on this post to Amazon.com are affiliate links.  Please refer to our Revenue Disclosure for further information.

———————————————————————————

Photo by Catherine Hadler via freedigitalphotos.net

Title – 8 Things We Hate About I.T.

Author(s) – Susan Cramm
Publisher – Harvard Business Press
ISBN-10 – 1422131661
Copyright Date – March 29, 2010

Wonk Rating – 5/5

Why I Wanted to Read This Book

I bought this book on the title alone.  The topic of the relationship between IT and Business is one of those hot-button topics for me.  I have worked at some really dysfunctional places over the years and this is always the root-cause of the dysfunction.  Ms. Cramm previously held positions as both a CIO and CFO, so she has a lot of street cred (at least with me) when it comes to telling both groups how they should be working together.

Intended Audience

From the book, “This book is written for leaders who make the business rock ‘n’ roll on a daily basis, but don’t control the enterprise-level decisions regarding strategy, annual goals and objectives, financial and head-count allocations, and the like.  As someone taught me many. many years ago, businesses aren’t run by CXO-level executives but by people on the front lines working with customers or supporting the people who do.  These operational leaders are the people who work with IT on a day-in, day-out basis, and if this book helps improve the quality of their interactions with the IT organization and the impact from their IT-enabled investments, then I can sleep soundly knowing it has helped businesses manage IT as an organizational asset and not simply as an organizational structure.” (pg. 9)

Organization of the Book

As the title suggests, this book is organized into 8 chapters focusing on each of the following 8 hates:

1. You Need Service, and IT Needs Control
2. You Need Results, and IT Needs Respect
3. You Need to Focus on Tactics, and IT Needs Strategic Alignment
4. You Need IT Funding, and IT Needs Returns
5. You Need On-Time Delivery, and IT Needs Quality
6. You Need Customization, and IT Needs Standardization
7. You Need Innovation, and IT Functions in Bureaucracy
8. You Need Good IT, and IT Can Become Great

Within each chapter, the author discusses the issues and “reconciles the frustrations.” (pg. 11)

Also, “Appendix C – Key Responsibilities of the New Business-IT Relationship” is a quick summary of the end-state from the discussions of the 8 Hates.  It’s definitely NOT a shortcut to reading the book because by themselves, without having read the material in each chapter, the responsibilities listed here are missing adequate context to make much sense.  Instead, I found that it had real value as a set of key phrases and words that triggered my memories of the 8 Hate discussions after reading the book

Theme

The overriding goal of this book is to advise business line leaders how to become “IT-Smart” business leaders, which the author defines as, “…masters at navigating the IT organizational bureaucracy, cutting through the jargon, managing IT-enabled change, demonstrating tangible value, leveraging the technology on the shelves, and fostering innovation within their teams.” (pg. 6)

From the 8 Hates listed above, you should be able to visualize the gap between the needs of the business leaders and the needs of IT.  The author spends each chapter discussing both sides of these needs, dissecting the associated issues, explaining why IT is the way it is, and then showing how these competing needs can be reconciled to the benefit of the enterprise as a whole.

Interesting Thoughts/Ideas

In Chapter 5, “You Need On-Time Delivery, and IT Needs Quality” (Quickness or Quality), there is a section titled “How Do I Engage Others in the Change Effort?” (pg. 92).  In here, Ms. Cramm states the following,

“When you’re educating the organization on the initiative and its impact, discard the concept of a communication plan.  Instead, define a ‘listening plan’ to promote dialogue that creates shared understanding and insights about what’s going well and not so well and how to tackle the barriers that put the project at risk.”

Ms. Cramm’s intent here is to promote active participation amongst the business stakeholders, to get everyone talking and asking questions, questions that “invite engagement and challenge” (pg. 93).  Communication plans focus on planning out the bureaucracy of a project, basically the types of communication events (status reports, stakeholder meetings, etc.) and their frequency.  This doesn’t really encourage communication (or dialogue), and it surely doesn’t educate anyone of anything other than when they can expect their status reports.

This thought stuck with me because I have seen time and time again where the business stakeholders are not personally invested in the initiative that their own business unit launched.  By having serious discussions amongst themselves in the early days of an initiative, with the intent to get as much genuine buy-in from as many of the business leaders as possible, the business side of the house will be better prepared to work with IT at the level that is required to successfully deliver “IT-enabled business initiatives.”  (The full quote here is, “There are no ‘IT Projects,’ there are only IT-enabled business initiatives.” (pg. 104)

In Chapter 7, “You Need Innovation, and IT Functions in Bureaucracy” (Innovation or Bureaucracy), the section titled “Elevate Your Relationship With IT”.  I found this whole discussion really intriguing, although in practice, I see this as very problematic from an implementation perspective.  The first paragraph reads as follows,

“It’s impossible to innovate without help from IT, for it holds the keys to the IT kingdom.  Elevate your relationship with IT by no longer asking IT to support things that you can do for yourself.  In return, ask IT to create an IT ‘gifted and talented’ program (‘IT Gate’) that gives lead users special IT privileges – the best tools, equipment, education, and support – as long as they agree to ‘first do no harm,’ cleans up their own messes, and support the less talented around them.  Your lead users (or power users) are the ones who drive IT crazy.  These users want more, they want it all, and they want it now.” (pg. 130)

My first thought upon reading this was, “that’d be cool,“ followed quickly by my second thought that IT itself would be a difficult nut to crack in most organizations to allowing this to happen.  Of course, Ms. Cramm knows this too and quickly follows up with,

“Although this ‘you do this, I’ll do that” exchange sounds like a win-win, be prepared for some resistance from IT…” (pg. 131)

And again, of course, she goes into great detail within this chapter discussing these and other issues.

My Thoughts

For me, the section title, “Elevate Your Relationship With IT” from above, makes my brain kick into high gear. The IT/Business relationship is frequently rather contentious even at the best of times and in the best of organizations. More often than not, IT is blamed for the problems.  Ms. Cramm is essentially telling the business leaders to step up and grab the bull by the horns, take responsibility, be accountable, and above all start understanding IT and how it works.

IT is far from perfect, but instead of complaining about the problems and the difficulty of the relationship, the IT-smart business leaders focus and spend their energy working towards solutions that benefit the enterprise as a whole.  This book is your roadmap to understanding how to get there.

One final thought.  As I was reading, I kept coming back to the idea of creating a study group at work using this book.  I’ll have to spend more time thinking this one through, but at first blush it seems like a very workable idea.  Let me know your thoughts on this.  I’ve had mixed results with study groups over the years, but the structure of this book would seem to lend itself well to the process.  We’ll see.

Notable Quotes

“It’s not that business leaders are indecisive; it’s just that defining requirements is hard.” (pg. 86)

“The point here is not that geeks are incompetent or that geekwork is hopeless, but that creativity and innovation are difficult to to.” (pg. 86)

“Because IT is embedded in virtually every business process, IT leaders understand that it’s impossible to get involved with everything.  But they don’t want to be the clown behind the circus elephant, cleaning up your mess when you get in over your head.” (pg. 103)

“The real value of strategic planning should not be judged by whether plans are executed exactly as written.  Rather, the impact is in improving the quality of daily decision making so that tactical execution is strategically grounded.” (pg. 44)

Additional Resources for Ms. Cramm

• Twitter – @scramm
• LinkedIn – http://www.linkedin.com/in/susancramm
• http://www.valuedance.com
• http://www.eighthates.com
• http://blogs.hbr.org/hbr/cramm/

————————————————–

Disclosure – The links on this page that go to Amazon.com are affiliate links.  Please refer to the Revenue Disclosure on this site for further information.

My Name is David and this year I turned…um, well, let’s just say that I’m a little older than most of the other boys writing to you.  I think you’ll find that I’ve been pretty good for the most part, so I’m hoping that you’ll at least hear me out on this.

I’ve worked really, really hard for a lot of years now designing, developing, and delivering data warehouses and business intelligence solutions.  All along the way, I’ve made sure that I am doing more than just building stuff; I am creating business value.

Now, you yourself have obviously got the North Pole IT Shop working really well.  I mean, seriously, you keep track of how many millions of kids?  The sheer number of disparate data sources that you have to integrate, how many are we talking about here?  Hundreds, thousands?  Unbelievable.  And I’ve never heard anything bad about your shop in a trade mag, news website, or blog, from either a data quality perspective or for your fulfillment capability.  Your IT accomplishments must be absolutely stunning to behold, and the value that you bring to the world is tremendous.  All of which brings me to the reason that I’m writing you.  I’m really starting to think this whole “Single Version of the Truth” stuff is just a pipe dream, yet I feel in my heart that you may have actually done it, so I’m hoping you can ease my mind.

Given your obvious IT successes, I have to assume that you’ve not only successfully implemented a master data management strategy (or perhaps even a full-blown Information-Oriented Architecture), but I’m guessing that you’ve achieved that “Holy Grail of Data”, the “Golden Customer Record”, the “Single Version of the Truth”.  How else to you explain your success?  It’s crazy, I know, but I BELIEVE.

I have to admit that it’s been pretty hard lately to keep the faith, to keep believing that Truth can be created in a single place for everyone to use.  My doubts started creeping in a couple of months ago when I read a blog post by Robin Bloor titled  Is There a Single Version of the Truth in which he was seemingly trying to crush my belief.  I didn’t want to listen to what he was trying to teach me, but he was making a pretty compelling case.  He was getting all philosophical and even brought Plato into the conversation.  Plato, for crying out loud!  Like he would know anything about Truth.  I stuck my fingers in my ears “LA, LA, LA, LA, LA”.

Then I stumbled upon a rather entertaining multi-part story told by Jim Harris called The Quest for the Golden Copy in which he suggests a compromise perspective, pushing us towards a “highest common denominator” set of customer data to be “used by the business units as an objective data foundation.”  So now my acid reflux is kicking in and I’m starting to squirm.  “Compromise”, he said.  That’s a good thing sometimes, right?

Finally, I read a really short article by David Loshin titled The Myth of the “Golden Record” in which he describes the false expectations of those implementing MDM, as well as the data quality and semantic hurdles of trying to get to the “Golden Record”.  Now, Mr. Loshin knows a thing or two about both data quality and master data management, so when he says “Relying on the creation of a golden record may not necessarily provide the value expected”, I more or less have to pay attention, even if it’s not what I want to hear.  In fact, I greatly respect all three of these gentlemen so it’s virtually impossible for me to continue to keep my fingers in my ears on this.

So, now I find myself in a dark place, surrounded by thoughts of having to concede the point that a Single Version of the Truth, though technically possible, is not really a practical goal in many (most?) situations.  My belief system is being assaulted by logic.

Anyway…  Long story short.  Here’s where I am hoping you’ll help me out.  Since you appear to have been quite successful at this, I’d like to invite you to speak at my local user group meeting about how you achieved the vaunted “Single Version of the Truth” in your IT shop.  I’m fairly confident that I can get someone to sponsor the event to cover your expenses.  I realize that you’ve been working real hard and have earned a serious vacation on a beach somewhere, but I can’t tell you how much I and all the rest of the Truth Believers would appreciate you dropping by and giving us the benefit of your wisdom and experience.

Yours Sincerely,

David

P.S. – If you really can’t find the time (and I guess I’d understand if you couldn’t), maybe you could send me a copy of your MDM strategy document instead, along with the canonical model.  That would be sweet too!  I won’t share it with anyone.  Pinky-Swear!

————————————————————————

If you found value in this article, please consider sharing it with your peers using one or more of the social networking buttons below or to the far right.  To receive updates when new articles are posted on this site, please consider subscribing to the RSS feed or email using the appropriate buttons in the top-right corner of this page.

Title – Rework

Author(s) - Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson
Publisher - Crown Business
ISBN-10 - 0307463745
Copyright Date - March 9, 2010

Wonk Rating - 5/5

What Made Me Want to Read This Book

This was an impulse buy for me.  I’ve worked with a couple of the software tools – BaseCamp and Backpack – developed by the author’s company, 37signals, and have great respect for what they have accomplished.  Reading the book’s description, I was intrigued by its teasing of “counter-intuitive ideas” towards successful business.  It also appeared to be a very quick read since each topic is rarely more that 2-3 pages long.  I figured I could squeeze this one in.

Organization

The book is organized into sections such as “Productivity”, “Competitors”, “Evolution”, and “Go”.  Within each section is a collection of really short discussions (typically 1-3 pages) like “Pick a fight”, “Throw less at the problem”, “Planning is guessing”, and “Welcome obscurity”.

Theme

The essential message of the book is that it’s possible to succeed in business without having to tow the line on the multitude of rules and covenants that exist in today’s business world.

Your Business Mentor

Were you lucky enough to have a mentor during the earliest parts of your career?  This was the person that really seemed to care about your development, gave you all kinds of sage advice (whether you wanted it or not).  This person had your back, helping you to succeed and trying to keep you out of trouble.  To those aspiring to make it with their own business, “Rework” is that mentor.

Although this book contains advice on business topics like finance, hiring, and marketing, it isn’t a book about finance, hiring, or marketing.  Rather, this book deals with the aspects of business that you don’t learn about in school – see “Outside money is Plan Z” (finance) (pg. 50), “Resumes are ridiculous” (hiring) (pg. 210), and “Press releases are spam” (marketing) (pg. 185).

For example, let’s say that you have an idea; actually, a really great idea.  You reflect on it a bit and decide that you could implement this idea in no more than 4 hours.  You start working on it just after lunch, but it’s now 8 hours later, you’ve worked straight through dinner, and you figure you’ve still got 4 more hours to go.  If you’ve read “Rework”, the first piece of advice that the book whispers to you is, “Your estimates suck” (pg. 124).  This is followed quickly by “Reasons to quit” (pg. 100).  Your inner dialogue convinces you it’s worthwhile to struggle onwards, but your mentor is at the top of its game and throws in “Don’t be a hero” (pg. 118) and “Go to sleep” (pg. 121).

My Thoughts

Overall, this was a great read, and as I anticipated, it was a pretty quick one as well.  The way it’s organized, I could open up it up, read a few pages, and then close it again, having gained a new insight or two to ponder. Honestly, even though the authors touted the book’s ideas and concepts as “counter-intuitive”, I felt, more often than not, that these ideas and concepts were mostly common sense.  But then, maybe that’s what makes them so counter-intuitive.  Given that common sense seems to be anything but common nowadays, maybe we all just need to be hit up side the head with it every once in a while.

It’s okay to be skeptical, but take the time to think about their approach to business.  I think you’ll find that most of it makes complete and total sense.

Notable Quotes

To close, here are a few quotes from the book that made an impression on me:

…that’s the problem: plans are inconsistent with improvisation.  And you have to be able to improvise.  You have to be able to pickup opportunities that come along.  Sometimes you have to say, “We’re going in a new direction because that’s what makes sense today.” – Planning is guessing (pg. 19)

When you start anything new, there are forces pulling you in a variety of directions.  There’s the stuff you could do, the stuff you want to do, and the stuff you have to do.  The stuff you have to do is where you should begin. – Start at the epicenter (pg. 72)

If you’re successful, people will try to copy what you do.  It’s just a fact of life.  But there’s a great way to protect yourself from copycats: make you part of your product or service.  Inject what’s unique about the way you think into what you sell.  Decommoditize your product.  Make it something that no one else can offer. – Decommoditize your product (pg. 138)

————————————————–

Disclosure – The links on this page that go to Amazon.com are affiliate links.  Please refer to the Revenue Disclosure on this site for further information.

I think it’s safe to say that given this guy’s obvious dislike for his IT group, there isn’t anything even remotely close to Business/IT alignment going on within his company.  I’ll even go another step further and suggest that without collaboration between the business and IT, his BI program isn’t going to be successful regardless of who is eventually put in charge.

Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

I tend to see the whole Business vs. IT thing as a self-fulfilling prophecy perpetuated by people like this (on both sides).  Most people I’ve met want to do a good job and want their work to have had a positive impact on their company.  Unfortunately, there always seems to be a very small minority (usually very vocal) that is more interested in competing than collaborating.  Unfortunately, it’s very difficult to sustain any kind of positive momentum towards a collaborative relationship with these people in the way. (Psssst.  Here’s a suggestion; just get rid of them.  They’ve likely been causing problems for years anyway.)

You Get What You Pay For

In a previous post, titled The Business Alignment Dysfunction, I quote a blog post from Susan Cramm, author of 8 Things We Hate About IT, titled The Four Types of IT Organizations that Leaders Cultivate.  Ms. Cramm opens the post with the following statement, “By default or by design, companies get the IT capability they’ve bought and paid for.”  She then describes four types of IT organizations: The Butler, The Grinder, The Team Player, and The Entrepreneur.  Finally, she closes with the following, “Whichever of these four types of IT that your company has, understand that the current state of the organization reflects many years of conscious or unconscious decisions by senior leadership to cultivate that kind of group.” (you should read Ms. Cramm’s post; it’s very short, but enlightening all the same). 

I have no idea which kind of IT organization the company president actually has, but I’d bet that he wants The Butler (a just-do-what-you’re-told type of group) and isn’t getting it.  Anyway, the “Axis of Evil” comment very heavily implies that he has absolutely no idea what to do with his technology resources. 

Lacking Strategic Guidance

To grow and be successful in this day and age, IT needs to be viewed by the executive leadership team of the company as a strategic resource to be leveraged towards achieving the company’s goals and directives. This resource needs to be properly managed and guided in order to provide the desired value to the company. The management part comes from having a competent and effective leader and partner in the top IT position. The guidance has to come from the executive leadership team itself. The IT group has to be tasked with a mission that is tied to the long-term goals of the company. To say this another way, the company leaders have to know how they want to use their IT resources to achieve their goals, both tactical and strategic. They have to be able to communicate that vision properly to IT, and they have to be able to apply effective governance to it all to keep everybody pointed in the right direction. The only way to get to this Garden of Eden is it to have a meaningful, trusting partnership between the executive leadership team and the IT leadership team.

He Who Lives in Glass Houses…

Perhaps our company president needs to take a step back for a moment and look at the problem from a different angle.  It’s obvious that he’s not getting what he wants from IT.  I get that.  So, here’s a couple of questions back at him.  What type of IT group is it that you really want?  Are you certain that this really the type of IT group that your company needs to be successful, or is it that you yourself lack vision and purpose with regards to the technology investments of your company?  Maybe someone should ask your IT group what they think of the job their company president is doing.  I bet you’d be quite surprised at the strength of the no-confidence vote you’d likely receive.  It is a two-way street after all.

————————————————————————

If you found value in this article, please consider sharing it with your peers using one or more of the social networking buttons below or to the far right.  To receive updates when new articles are posted on this site, please consider subscribing to the RSS feed or email using the appropriate buttons in the top-right corner of this page.

Photo by atsoram via stock.xchng

The Sizzle

I don’t know how much this term is used today, but back about 12 years ago when I was doing a lot of pre-sales technical support for a small consulting firm, “Selling The Sizzle” was the soup de jour.  Basically, this sales technique focuses on matching the value inherent in your product or service to the prospective client’s major pain point(s), and then generating excitement for the solution.  If you’ve done this right, the product or service that you’re selling becomes nothing more than an implementation detail that needs to get worked out within the Statement of Work.  Congratulations!

So, how does this apply to you?  Well, I haven’t worked as a consultant for almost 10 years now, but this experience has been invaluable to me nonetheless.  As a technology leader, you’ve got to be able to sell your thoughts and ideas to the business leaders.  Only by promoting and evangelizing the business value (“Sizzle”) of those thoughts and ideas to the business leaders are you going to get the long-term backing and support from them that you’ll need in order to have a successful implementation.  This applies to pretty much all IT projects and initiatives.  The better you are at selling the sizzle to the business leaders, the more success you’ll have getting what you need.

If You Don't Do It, Someone Else Will

I realize that I’m oversimplifying things a bit, but believe me, I know that it’s anything but easy.  A lot of effort has to go into tying your technology brainchildren to the strategic goals and initiatives of the business, but you have to do it.  If you don’t, guess what happens?  Outside consultants will be brought in and someone else will get to have all the fun (and glory) of implementing the things that you thought of first.  Sad really.

As a side note, did you know that it can frequently take at least six months for an outside vendor to close a deal with your company.  The time starts when the first contact is made and ends when the contract or SOW is signed.  Half a year before anybody starts solving problems and generating value for the company.  I bring this up because, as an internal technology leader, you have an advantage that the outsiders don’t.  You have ready access to the business line leaders that are experiencing the painful effects of things like having crucial data spread across multiple systems and/or poor data quality.  It’s so much easier for you to make and build relationships with these people than it is for the outsiders.  Use this to your advantage.

One final thought on this.  Why do you think so many companies decide to use outside consultants or vendors to implement things that the internal IT folks have been talking about and promoting for months?  These people know how to sell value to the business, whereas a good majority of technology folks do not.  This is a skill that you must develop in yourself, and your team, if you don’t want to be marginalized by the business leaders.

Get Started

To get yourself started down this path, begin identifying the line leaders that are the most vocal about how bad things are for them.  Spend the time necessary to learn about their business problems.  Don’t do this through formal meetings; meet them one-on-one for coffee in the morning or drinks after work, somewhere other than a conference room.  Build the relationship with trust and a genuine desire to help that person.  And finally, don’t be a geek; keep your conversations focused on business problems and business solutions. 

————————————————————-

If you found value in this article, please consider sharing it with your peers using one or more of the social networking buttons below or to the far right.  To receive updates when new articles are posted on this site, please consider subscribing to the RSS feed or email using the appropriate buttons in the top-right corner of this page.  As always, I appreciate your continued support.

Image provided by juliaf via stock.xchng

Anyway, with this blog now being a going concern, I decided it would be fun to create and share a reading list for the year.

The group of books listed below is a fairly eclectic bunch, but they all pretty much fall within the theme of this blog; general data management topics and creating business value.  Once I’m done reading each book, I will write up my thoughts and opinions to share them with you through a book review post.

Before I jump into the list, I feel the need to provide a short disclaimer for any of my anal retentive friends that might happen to read this.  I do not intend to read these books in any specific order.  I’ve listed the books in alphabetical order so that I don’t imply favoritism towards any author (although I do have a couple of favorites in the list).  Also, I do not personally know any of these authors, nor do I own any signed copies (although a signed copy of Deming’s book would be really cool).  I have purchased each of these books with my own money; they are not publisher comps.  Finally, I reserve the right to change my mind and swap out a book or two as other new and interesting books are released throughout the year (short attention span, remember).

Okay, so here we go.  Here is the inaugural edition of the annual Data Management Wonk Reading List.

———————————————————————————

	8 Things We Hate About IT : How to Move Beyond the Frustrations to Form a New Partnership With IT – Susan Cramm I’ve actually already started reading this book.  I bought this on the title alone.  The topic of the relationship between IT and the Business is one of those hot-button items for me.  I have worked at some really dysfunctional places over the years and this is always the root-cause of the dysfunction.  Ms. Cramm previously held positions as both a CIO and CFO, so she has a lot of street cred (at least with me) when it comes to telling both groups how they should be working together.Here are a few early quotes that stuck with me: “Business leaders need to become smarter about how to lead with technology and how to work with IT” (pg. 6) “IT has spent the past thirty years working on alignment, only to find that when it really matters, alignment exists only on the surface” (pg. 24) “To realize alignment, line leaders need to treat IT leaders as business partners and not simply as service providers” (pg. 24) ———————————————– UPDATE: I’ve read this. Check out my book report.
	Business Analytics : Taking Business Intelligence Beyond Reporting- Gert H. N. Laursen and Jesper ThorlundA huge part of my career has been spent working with managers at all levels, both within IT and the business.  With that in mind, I’m always looking for good books that explain what I do for a living to the business people.  I usually glean a fair amount of insight from these books that help me communicate with them better.
	Data Driven: Profiting from Your Most Important Business Asset- Thomas C. RedmanThis book focuses on the data-as-a-corporate-asset topic.  We’ll see what new stuff I can get out of this one.  The author has an extensive data quality background, so I expect to get some pearls of wisdom on that topic as well.
	How to Measure Anything: Finding the Value of “Intangibles” in Business- Douglas W. HubbardThis is one of the glaring weaknesses in my background.  I had a CIO a few years ago that was big into metrics and it got me inspired enough to buy the book, but then other cool things came along and got in the way (have I mentioned my short attention span?)This is the year.
	IT Savvy: What Top Executives Must Know to Go From Pain to Gain- Peter Weill, Jeanne RossThis is the first of three similar books on this list that focus on managing IT properly in order to create business value.  These types of books are essential reading for senior staff members within IT, such as the architect-level folks.  If you don’t have any understanding of how IT can, and should, be utilized within an organization to generate value, then you’re not going to be the one creating that value for your organization in the long-run.FWIW, Ms. Cramm references this book at least once (so far) in her book, “8 Things We Hate About IT”.
	Managing IT as a Business: A Survival Guide for CEOs- Mark LutchenHere is the second book on the list dedicated to managing IT for maximum value.  I’ve had this one for a while now, but I’ve only ever scanned through it.  It’s time to actually sit down and read it.
	Master Data Management- David LoshinI’m a big fan of David Loshin’s work, I will read anything that he decides to write.  The fact that I am always interested in MDM as well is just a bonus.Another FWIW, he also has a Business Intelligence book with “…for the Savvy Manager” in the title, so of course, I had to read that too.  I’ll have to write a review of that one.  I thought it was pretty solid.
	Out of the Crisis- W. Edwards DemingI went to hear Larry English (author of Information Quality Applied) speak a couple of years back, and he walked around the audience during his presentation with an old, well-worn edition of this book in his hand.  At first glace, it looked rather tattered, but after getting a closer look at it, all three non-binding edges of the book were bristling with with sticky notes.  I daresay, with as many times as Mr. English quoted from this book, he probably has most, if not all, of this book memorized.  Out of the Crisis is one of those books that I have meant to read for years, but have just never gotten around to.  This is the year that it’ll get done.
	Predictable Success: Getting Your Organization On the Growth Track–and Keeping it There- Les McKeownI read the first chapter of this book before I bought it and it intrigued me.  Mr. McKeown has defined a business cycle consisting of 7 stages: Early Struggle, Fun, Whitewater, Predictable Success, Treadmill, The Big Rut, and Death Rattle.  The writing is well-paced and uses stories of client situations to sell his points.  The bulk of the chapter is a concise overview of each stage in the cycle and descriptions of the benefits of achieving Predictable Success.  When I finished the chapter, I was hooked and wanted more.
	Rework- Jason Fried and David Heinemeier HanssonYet another one that I’ve already started.  This is written by the founders of 37Signals.com, and consists of a whole slew of really short chapters that take on corporate myths and sacred cows and tell you why they are bad for successful business.  One of these chapters, “Planning is Guessing”, was the impetus for my article Planning is Guessing … Really?I’m looking forward to the rest of the book; I hope I get as riled-up (and inspired) as I did by what I’ve already read.  Great book so far. ———————————————– UPDATE: I’ve read this. Check out my book report.
	The Data Asset : Govern Your Data for Business Success- Tony FisherThis book promises “the guidance for building the business case for data quality and data governance”.   The business case is the make-or-break artifact for both of these initiatives.  One can never have enough good examples of how to do this, because honestly, one-size will never fit all when it comes to these types of proposals.
	The Practitioner’s Guide to Data Quality Improvement- David LoshinAgain, David Loshin.  Gotta read it.This time its data quality.  I’ve worn out his previous data quality book “Enterprise Knowledge Management: The Data Quality Approach”.  We’ll see what this one has to offer.
	The Real Business of IT : How CIOs Create and Communicate Business Value- Richard HunterThis is the last of the three books on managing IT for value creation.  The first two are primarily targeted at the business leaders, specifically the upper-level folks.  This one is targeted at the CIO; same stuff, different perspective.The tagline of the book “How CIOS Create and Communicate Business Value” was what grabbed my attention.  This one should be right up my alley.
	What I Didn’t Learn in Business School : How Strategy Works in the Real World- Jay B. BarneyThis is another one that I’ve already started.  I seem to have a strange place in my heart for strategy books; I can’t seem to leave them alone.  This one is presented as the first-person fictional story of a recent MBA grad that gets his ego thumped down a few notches while on his first assignment.  So far it seems a bit thin on meaty content, but I’ll let you know more when I’m done.

———————————————————————————

Well, that’s the list.  If you’ve found it valuable, please consider sharing it with your peers using one or more of the social networking buttons below.  To receive updates when new articles are posted on this site, please consider subscribing to the RSS feed or email using the appropriate buttons in the top-right corner of this page.  As always, I appreciate your continued support.

Disclosure – The links on this post that go to Amazon.com are affiliate links.  Please refer to our Revenue Disclosure for further information.

———————————————————————————

Photo by Catherine Hadler via freedigitalphotos.net

Technical Debt

So, what precisely is technical debt?  I’ll let Mr. Martin Fowler explain it to you.  (@martinfowler on Twitter)

Technical Debt is a wonderful metaphor developed by Ward Cunningham to help us think about this problem. In this metaphor, doing things the quick and dirty way sets us up with a technical debt, which is similar to a financial debt. Like a financial debt, the technical debt incurs interest payments, which come in the form of the extra effort that we have to do in future development because of the quick and dirty design choice. We can choose to continue paying the interest, or we can pay down the principal by refactoring the quick and dirty design into the better design. Although it costs to pay down the principal, we gain by reduced interest payments in the future.

The metaphor also explains why it may be sensible to do the quick and dirty approach. Just as a business incurs some debt to take advantage of a market opportunity developers may incur technical debt to hit an important deadline. The all too common problem is that development organizations let their debt get out of control and spend most of their future development effort paying crippling interest payments.

How Does This Apply to Data Management?

The debt metaphor is used to simplify the notion that we create liabilities for ourselves when we make sub-optimal decisions.  We know and understand that there is a right way to do something, but we choose, for whatever reason, to take a path that is something less than that right way.  For example, I can choose to do a half-assed job on the lawn on Saturday morning in order to catch the start of the game.  With this, I’ve made an intentional decision to create a debt that I know will have to be paid off at some point.  As long as I’ve thought it through though, and feel that its being done for a good reason, in theory, its permissible to accrue this debt.  In this example, not only does my lawn look like crap within a few short days, but I’ve also created more work for myself the next time I have to mow the lawn.  Additionally, the interest payments that I will be making on this decision will likely be made daily and come in the form of the abuse I will catch from my wife for how the lawn looks.

Given that I’ve shown that this is a general, all-purpose metaphor, how can it not apply to data management?

Where is There Technical Debt in Data?

So, where do we find technical debt in the data management world?  Just listen to the conversations around you.  From cubicle huddles and coffee machine conversations to the morning scrums, people are making decisions about how to move forward with the tasks on the project.  Some of those decisions will be about cutting a corner here or there.

Specifically, data integration is an excellent place to find technical debt, and its interest payment usually bites you with poor performance.  Same thing goes for data modeling and physical database design.  Can I have technical debt in MDM?  Yup.  Data services?  You bet.  Wherever you can cut corners, you will find technical debt.

Ironically, data quality is one of the first things that comes to mind when I start talking about this with my peers, but I don’t see this as technical debt.  Rather, poor data quality is itself an interest payment against one or more debts created elsewhere.  Things such as the app dev choosing not to implement validation rules within a data input application, or the data entry folks choosing to enter junk data into a field to get around a poorly designed validation rule.  (Honestly, data quality issues should probably be more appropriately described as compound interest given that the further downstream the data gets, the worse the problems become.)

Nervous Yet?

Does any of this make you nervous?  It should.  When you consider that a good-sized majority of our IT budgets are spent on operations and maintenance (status quo type stuff), and not on creating anything new, you should be very nervous.  Having lopsided budgets like this prevents your team from being able to properly support the needs of the business in a timely fashion.  And of course, if their needs aren’t being met by your team, they’ll likely go somewhere else to try to get it done, or try to do it themselves.

If you don’t start actively managing your technical debt situation, you will eventually be forced into technical bankruptcy.  I assume at this point that you can see how that’s gonna play out.

Pay me now, or pay me later; either way, you’re gonna pay me.

The technical debt topic typically creates a good bit of chatter.  What do you have to say about it?  Leave a comment.

—————————————————————

If you found value in this article, please consider sharing it with your peers using one or more of the social networking buttons below.  To receive updates when new articles are posted on this site, please consider subscribing to the RSS feed or email using the appropriate buttons in the top-right corner of this page.  As always, I appreciate your continued support and encouragement.

Without a doubt, we all need to learn from our mistakes, big or small, and it’s a poor leader that gets in your face for every minor transgression.  However, we shouldn’t be deluding ourselves into thinking that it’s okay to mess up on a frequent basis so long as we learn something in return.

Don’t get me wrong here.  I’m not a hard-ass (not on purpose anyway), but I do strongly believe that we should all hold ourselves accountable for our results.  We do this by striving for success, as well as being hard on ourselves if we ultimately miss the target.  The most positive thing that we can do for ourselves is to make a strong effort to learn as much as possible about how to succeed at what we are attempting to do BEFORE we attempt to do it.  Yeah, yeah, I hear you.  “Who’s got the time?”  Well, for the sake of your career, you’d better find the time somewhere because the people that fail too often are a liability to their company, and most companies are aggressively trying to minimize their liabilities (if you know what I mean).

So, what can we do?  It turns out that there are so many people out there that have already made the mistakes that we are seeking to avoid, and lots of those people have generously shared their hard-earned insights through books or blogs so that the rest of us don’t have to make those mistakes ourselves.  Take the time to research the right way to do something; learn what there is to learn in advance.  The time that we spend on continued learning is an investment in ourselves and our careers.  Successful people do this.  You do want to be successful don’t you?

Obviously, this rant isn’t about the real risk-takers (innovators, entrepreneurs, artists, etc.) out there; the ones that are blazing new trails for others to follow.  Although those folks still shouldn’t feel good about failing, they do get a bit of a pass since they don’t have the opportunity to just search the web for a “How-To” or “Best Practices” article.  For the rest of us however, those types of resources do exist and there aren’t any good reasons not to take advantage of them.

For the sake of full disclosure, yes, I’ve failed before, and yes, I’ve always attempted to learn what I could from those failures.  However, you won’t ever catch me feeling good about it.

“Failure is not a single, cataclysmic event.  You don’t fail overnight.  Instead, failure is a few errors in judgment, repeated every day.” – Jim Rohn

Do you agree, or do you just think I’m being a hard-ass?  Let me know where YOU stand on this.

————————————————————————

Photo by atsoram via stock.xchng

Beyond promotions and raises for individuals, managers have to find ways to motivate their people as a team to achieve bigger and better things for the benefit of the company.  Frequently, these managers turn to setting up competitions to get their people excited.  However, how they go about doing this will have a huge impact on how “healthy” this is for their work environment.

When is Competition “Healthy”?

The overriding attributes that make competition “healthy” are: a worthwhile business goal, a worthwhile incentive, and fairness in the evaluation of the results.  Without these things, the competition will be decidedly unhealthy.  I have also found that team-level competitions tend to work very well (assuming the above attributes), whereas pitting individuals against each other (excluding the sales folks) tends to cause more problems than it solves.

12 “Unhealthy” Things

Having said all this, here is a list of 12 things that a manager can do to ensure the failure of his/her competition (in no particular order):

1. When the end-goal is not well-defined or is non-existent
2. When the end-goal is not tied to the achievement of an important business need
3. When the metrics used to determine the winner(s) are subjective
4. When the incentive is uninspiring
5. When the boss props up their favorites/cronies/pets regardless of their actual performance
6. When the boss clearly has someone in mind already to be the chosen winner, but is forced to go through the motions
7. When the boss allows a overly competitive jerk to dominate the competition
8. When the boss likes being sucked-up to, and possibly even encourages it in some fashion
9. When the perception exists that there will ultimately be some kind of negative stigma attached to the losers
10. When the manager can’t seem to keep himself/herself motivated, much less his/her direct-reports
11. When the competition lasts too long
12. When the competition doesn’t appear to be achieving its goal
13. (Baker’s Dozen Bonus) When two or more of the above items are happening concurrently

In the FWIW category, I’ve found that competitions in the IT Dept. in particular seems to fall flat.  It’s usually a combination of reasons, but the primary ones are the first 2 items above.  To our credit however, we do seem to step up appropriately for competitions tied to charitable giving (blood drives, Toys for Tots, etc.).  Of course, with these examples, #1 and #2 are well-defined.  Go figure.

The Resulting Damage

So what happens when the competition devolves into an unhealthy mess?  Here’s a bonus list of the type of damage that comes from mismanaging the competition thing:

1. Creates a dysfunctional team
2. Breeds resentment amongst the team
3. Lowers productivity as people begin to spend too much time politicking
4. Spawns a core group of “favorites” or ”pets”

Your Turn

Have you ever worked for someone who seemed to enjoy pitting their employees against each other under the guise of “healthy” competition?  I have, and it wasn’t “healthy” for me, my peers, or the members of our teams.  Let’s here your experiences in the comments.

————————————————————

If you found value in this article, please consider sharing it with your peers using one or more of the social networking buttons below.  To receive updates when new articles are posted on this site, please consider subscribing to the RSS feed or email using the appropriate buttons in the top-right corner of this page.  As always, I appreciate your continued support.

Photo by vierdrie via stock.xchng