At the beginning of the year we are greeted with the annual list of hottest “project management trends” prognostications. We are now three months into the year and I think it worthwhile to note the latest developments that have come up in project management meetings, conferences, and in the field. Some of these are in alignment with what you may have seen in some earlier articles, but these are four that I find to be most significant thus far, and there may be a couple of surprises for you here.
(more…)IT management
The Big (D) — Ways of Looking at Big Data
Recently I have been involved in several efforts regarding what is often referred to as Big Data, but of a particular kind. Oftentimes the term, which was first defined by Doug Laney now at Gartner, is seen as utilizing data in order to monetize consumer information that is being collected to allow business to focus advertising, marketing, and product development. More generally, however, big data (as defined by Laney) distinguishes itself from normal relational database management by its volume, variety, velocity, variability, and complexity. The Wikipedia definition is slightly different with the additional attribute of veracity.
(more…)Doctor My Eyes — Excel is Not a Project Management Tool (and neither is PowerPoint)
This is not to disparage the utility of a good spreadsheet to take care of those transient requirements to take a bit of data from the reporting systems and to run some custom algorithms or trends to perform what-if or other one-off analysis. Probably most of us do this occasionally.
What I am referring to is the condition in many organizations in which data that consists of information essential to business operations is kept and analyzed using spreadsheets or other flat delimited storage or text methods. The issue here is the optimum use of information, which the use of Excel and PowerPoint does not achieve. Before anyone thinks that this is a contrarian’s post that is critical of Microsoft products, one need only read the technical advantages of true relational database management systems that are managed by specialized language like MS SQL. Each of these applications and products has their proper place.
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Life, Project Management, and Everything 