During my day job I provide a number of fairly large customers with support to determine their needs for software that meets the criteria from my last post. That is, I provide software that takes an open data systems approach to data transformation and integration. My team and I deliver this capability with an open user interface based on Windows and .NET components augmented by time-phased and data management functionality that puts SMEs back in the driver’s seat of what they need in terms of analysis and data visualization. In virtually all cases our technology obviates the need for the extensive, time consuming, and costly services of a data scientist or software developer.
(more…)Author: Nick Pisano
Potato, Potahto, Tomato, Tomahto: Data Normalization vs. Standardization, Why the Difference Matters
In my vocation I run a technology company devoted to program management solutions that is primarily concerned with taking data and converting it into information to establish a knowledge-based environment. Similarly, in my avocation I deal with the meaning of information and how to turn it into insight and knowledge. This latter activity concerns the subject areas of history, sociology, and science.
In my travels just prior to and since the New Year, I have come upon a number of experts and fellow enthusiasts in these respective fields. The overwhelming numbers of these encounters have been productive, educational, and cordial. We respectfully disagree in some cases about the significance of a particular approach, governance when it comes to project and program management policy, but generally there is a great deal of agreement, particularly on basic facts and terminology. But some areas of disagreement–particularly those that come from left field–tend to be the most interesting because they create an opportunity to clarify a larger issue.
In a recent venue I encountered this last example where the issue was the use of the phrase data normalization. The issue at hand was that the use of “data normalization” suggested some statistical methodology in reconciling data into a standard schema. Instead, it was suggested, the term “data standardization” was more appropriate.
(more…)Ring Out the Old, Ring in the New: Data Transformation Podcasting
Robin Williams at Innovate IPM interviewed me a few weeks ago and has a new podcast up to cap off the year. The main thrust of our discussion, as it turned out, which began as a wide-ranging one, settled on digital transformation and the changes and developments that I’ve seen in this area over the last three decades.
(more…)Open: Strategic Planning, Open Data Systems, and the Section 809 Panel
Sundays are usually days reserved for music and the group Rhye was playing in the background when this topic came to mind.
I have been preparing for my presentation in collaboration with my Navy colleague John Collins for the upcoming Integrated Program Management Workshop in Baltimore. This presentation will be a non-proprietary/non-commercial talk about understanding the issue of unlocking data to support national defense systems, but the topic has broader interest.
Thus, in advance of that formal presentation in Baltimore, there are issues and principles that are useful to cover, given that data capture and its processing, delivery, and use is at the heart of all systems in government, and private industry and organizations.
(more…)Sledgehammer: Pisano Talks!
My blogging hiatus is coming to an end as I take a sledgehammer to the writer’s block wall.
I’ve traveled far and wide over the last six months to various venues across the country and have collected a number of new and interesting perspectives on the issues of data transformation, integrated project management, and business analytics and visualization. As a result, I have developed some very strong opinions regarding the trends that work and those that don’t regarding these topics and will be sharing these perspectives (with the appropriate supporting documentation per usual) in following posts.
To get things started this post will be relatively brief.
(more…)Both Sides Now — The Value of Data Exploration
Over the last several months I have authored a number of stillborn articles that just did not live up to the standards that I set for this blog site. After all, sometimes we just have nothing important to add to the conversation. In a world dominated by narcissism, it is not necessary to constantly have something to say. Some reflection and consideration are necessary, especially if one is to be as succinct as possible.
A quote ascribed to Woodrow Wilson, which may be apocryphal, though it does appear in two of his biographies, was in response to being lauded by someone for making a number of short, succinct, and informative speeches. When asked how he was able to do this, President Wilson is supposed to have replied:
“It depends. If I am to speak ten minutes, I need a week for preparation; if fifteen minutes, three days; if half an hour, two days; if an hour, I am ready now.”
An undisciplined mind has a lot to say about nothing in particular with varying degrees of fidelity to fact or truth. When in normal conversation we most often free ourselves from the discipline expected for more rigorous thinking. This is not necessarily a bad thing if we are saying nothing of consequence and there are gradations, of course. Even the most disciplined mind gets things wrong. We all need editors and fact checkers.
(more…)Take Me To The River, Part 3, Technical Performance and Risk Management Digital Elements of Integrated Program Management
Part three of this series of articles on the elements of Integrated Program and Project Management will focus on two additional areas of IPM: technical performance and risk management. Prior to jumping in, however–and given the timeframe over which I’ve written this series–a summary to date is in order.
(more…)Ch- Ch- Changes–What I Learned at the NDIA IPMD Meeting and Last Thoughts on POGO DCMA
Hot Topics at the National Defense Industrial Association’s Integrated Program Management Division (NDIA-IPMD)
For those of you who did not attend, or who have a passing interest in what is happening in the public sphere of DoD acquisition, the NDIA IPMD meeting held last week was a great importance. Here are the highlights.
(more…)Back to School Daze Blogging–DCMA Investigation on POGO, DDSTOP, $600 Ashtrays,and Epistemic Sunk Costs
Family summer visits and trips are in the rear view–as well as the simultaneous demands of balancing the responsibilities of a, you know, day job–and so it is time to take up blogging once again.
I will return to my running topic of Integrated Program and Project Management in short order, but a topic of more immediate interest concerns the article that appeared on the website for pogo.org last week entitled “Pentagon’s Contracting Gurus Mismanaged Their Own Contracts.” Such provocative headlines are part and parcel of organizations like POGO, which have an agenda that seems to cross the line between reasonable concern and unhinged outrage with a tinge conspiracy mongering. But the content of the article itself is accurate and well written, if also somewhat ripe with overstatement, so I think it useful to unpack what it says and what it means.
(more…)Take Me To The River, Part 2, Schedule Elements–A Digital Inventory of Integrated Program Management Elements
Recent attendance at various forums to speak has interrupted the flow of this series on IPM elements. Among these venues I was engaged in discussions regarding this topic, as well as the effects of acquisition reform on the IT, program, and project management communities in the DoD and A&D marketplace.
For this post I will restrict the topic to what are often called schedule elements, though that is a nebulous term. Also, one should not draw a conclusion that because I am dealing with this topic following cost elements, that it is somehow inferior in importance to those elements. On the contrary, planning and scheduling are integral to applying resources and costs, in tracking cost performance, and in our systemic analysis its activities, artifacts, and elements are antecedent to cost element considerations.
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