The New IT: Driving Business Innovation With Technology

Andi Mann, chief technology advocate at Splunk, sees major changes afoot in how IT and business are aligning.

Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.informationweek.com

I believe that Business Leaders don’t want Organizational Project Management (OPM,) they want the benefits which OPM can provide. Andi Mann, chief technology advocate at Splunk, provides a 4 minute blog which through our project management lens provides validation of the value of OPM without using our language. Big Takeaway – Talk the language of business & innovation and don’t force executives to translate our project management language.

First Andi Mann https://twitter.com/andimann indirectly defines OPM: “Connecting IT delivery directly with business goals is enabling the company to make data-driven technology decisions, creating measurably better business outcomes.”

Second Andi combines both technology and business approaches. He states “To stay competitive:
– organizations need to drive innovation, not only with their products and services, (for example Cloud and common Data Fabric) but
– also in business approaches and finding new strategies to exceed business goals.” (for example Dev Ops)

He also indirectly summarizes OPM benefits. “Aligning IT with business goals from the get-go gives companies a competitive edge and sets the standard for success.”

Great short read for any project management professional.

http://www.informationweek.com/devops/the-new-it-driving-business-innovation-with-tech-/a/d-id/1326123?

Visualizations That Really Work

HBR Articles by Scott Berinato on Data Visualizations Best Practices for Presentations

Know what message you’re trying to communicate before you get down in the weeds.

Original Source: Data Visualizations   and  hbr.org and an updated Effective Visualizations. 

As a project manager, have you ever stared at your screen and asked yourself “how do I present this data?”  Yeah – we have all been there.

Focusing on data presentation is the wrong way to talk to yourself or your team. The important data visualization mindset is not about data wrangling, graphics or powerpoint, it is about the business message you want to share and what is the impact.

This article has great insight on 4 types of messages, and suggests which visualization tools or models work best. Great insight when you need to either motivate team members or defend choices for presentations!

 

How to present data

Best Practices for Data Visualizations

Idea Illustration. We might call this quadrant the “consultants’ corner.” and these “illustrations clarify complex ideas by drawing on our ability to understand metaphors (trees, bridges) and simple design conventions (circles, hierarchies). Org charts and decision trees are classic examples of idea illustration.”

 

Idea Generation. “Managers may not think of visualization as a tool to support idea generation, but they use it to brainstorm all the time—on whiteboards, on butcher paper, or, classically, on the back of a napkin. Like idea illustration, idea generation relies on conceptual metaphors, but it takes place in more-informal settings, such as off-sites, strategy sessions, and early-phase innovation projects.”

 

Visual Discovery.  “This is the most complicated quadrant, because in truth it holds two categories…..This article divides exploratory purposes into two kinds: testing a hypothesis and mining for patterns, trends, and anomalies. The former is focused, whereas the latter is more flexible. The bigger and more complex the data, and the less you know going in, the more open-ended the work.”

 

Everyday Dataviz.  “Whereas data scientists do most of the work on visual exploration, managers do most of the work on everyday visualizations. This quadrant comprises the basic charts and graphs you normally paste from a spreadsheet into a presentation. They are usually simple—line charts, bar charts, pies, and scatter plots.”

 

Very good food for thought as you are leading project teams in communicating with your stakeholders and leadership.

HBR article is written by Scott Berinato is a senior editor at Harvard Business Review and the author of Good Charts: The HBR Guide to Making Smarter, More Persuasive Data Visualizations, forthcoming from Harvard Business Review Press and available for pre-order.

Again check out his article on effective visualizations. 

Note:  I live in California and get no affiliate money for book recommendations. If I post, it means that I like the book.  You can use the code BUSINESS20 to get 20% off any plan at https://venngage.com/blog/data-visualization/

 

The Hidden Side Effects of Using Big Data to Better Understand Your Customers

Learn what common pitfalls to avoid when using big data to improve customer service and grow customer relationships

Sourced through Scoop.it from: blog.kissmetrics.com

Analytics Project managers! Outstanding overview of use cases and challenges of working with Big Data.  And an amusing definition of Big Data -> hint – its messy:-)

PMI Silicon Valley Presentation on Analytics Project Management by Rosemary Hossenlopp

Big Data Analytics Projects Initiatives; Myths and Mistakes

How to help big data project teams

How to improve analytics project team performance

This education-packed session on July 13, 2016 shared trends in the analytics project management industry. This presentation provided key analytics project insights needed to manage analytics programs when you need to show business results for your big data program.

 

This talk covered:

• 3 Myths of Analytics Projects

• 3 Mistakes Managing Analytic Projects, and

• Understanding of Project Health Check Approaches

Analytics projects are filled with lots of new words. Rosemary shared key definitions to help you sort through the acronym soup which technical personnel may be using.

Next, this session looked at why this is really beginning to be an Analytics-everywhere world. We want to see how the trends apply to the project management space.

Most importantly, we  shared how there are a lot of myths out there. This really isn’t anyone’s fault. It is because no one is looking at this from a project management perspective. There is a lot of information on how to implement tools yet that doesn’t get teams to innovation. There is a lot of content on specific techniques yet without linkage on how to link to a strategic outcome. So due to the lack of a standard approach to analytics projects, there is a high failure rate.

Rosemary shared an analytics life cycle that will improve project outcomes. She also provides a framework to look at projects to see how to move your teams into innovation and growth outcomes!

Click Here to Receive a PDF of the Slides.

Email me if your team has questions on Analytics projects.