In the last two weeks, we've covered balanced scorecards and a decent intro to BI/DW.
Balanced scorecards just make sense to me. Having worked for large enterprises pretty much my entire IT career, trying to judge whether an organization is succeeding or not based on just one facet, specifically the bottom-line, is very narrow minded. Investments in future technology, new processes, "self"-analysis (company perspective) and the people behind them is what has made good companies great. The goal of a company (or at least it should be) is to grow, maintain profitability and keep a "healthy" workforce that is constantly contributing back to the company. Figuring how this can be measured, taken advantage of and improved is the key. This the "balanced" part: looking at a company from essentially a holistic perspective, and not from a pedestal through rose-colored glasses at the quarterly financials.
I know that there is often hesitation on the part of management to "take it all in." Whether it's looking in the mirror so speak and seeing how the internal workings are really working (or not in many cases), how others really view the company (like the paying customers who may not be as loyal as management perceives) and what is happening behind those closed doors where all the R&D funding goes. But it should be done (I'm not going to go on to some diatribe rationalizing why, there are plenty of books, articles, etc. that do a much better job than me).
My background is heavy on the technical and process aspects of IT (requirements, design, development, test, architecture, analysis, implementation, etc.); I have never really been involved with the financial aspects of the companies I've worked with or for. But... from a hands-on, anecdotal perspective, I can attest to the value of the internal creativity and innovation piece of the balanced scorecard. I witnessed it regularly (and even participated).
The moments of "outlandish" ideas borne on Friday afternoons while consuming MAPI beers (it's an Exchange thing :) sometimes weren't just local pilsner & IPA induced ramblings, they were real ideas. Ideas that were still valid come Monday morning. We (Microsoftees) were given fairly free reign to chase down these ideas and run them to the ground. And sometimes, they weren't too far off-base from where the company wanted to be. And if the ideas made sense and had future value, we, the brain childs of the ideas would present them, not some manager. And with each approval up through the reporting structure, you got closer to the "big one", the scary, yet fulfilling "Bill G Review" (back in the good'ole days when he was running the joint). His nod could put you and your newly anointed position and project on a whole other level. Now, not every idea would make it that far; some were already in progress elsewhere, some were "killed" early, etc.. The thing was, everyone knew that even the most junior, lowest node in the reporting chain could have an impact, and a major one at that.
My friends worked in R&D and had a show-and-tell in 1999. They said there wasn't going to be a lot of hoopla and fanfare, but to come on over anyway. I would think it was cool. What they showed was hard to fathom at the time and nearly impossible to display, literally, given the paucity of the hardware at the time: a PC workspace that presented everything in high-definition 3-D using on-screen touch controls. I think the code-name was Neptune or something like that. It wasn't feasible at the time for consumer use, but it had potential and would eventually influence things like Aero and the Windows interfaces since then as well as the now prevalent touch-screen interfaces on all Windows platforms.
So did Microsoft score? Repeatedly. Was the investment in R&D and the average employee worth it even though there was no immediate ROI? You bet. Is Microsoft the only company to realize this? Not a chance. Just look at the competition in the IT market alone: Google, Apple, etc. They all "get it" in some way or another.
I could go on about how programmatically the balanced scorecard concept is presented up and down the management chain, needs buy-in from all business units, must be part of the corporate culture, is an iterative/refining process, etc. but I won't. The fact is, this mirrors how companies should be addressing their information security and governance models as well as any other programs that are "culture changing." The finer details and implementations may be different, but their overall approaches are pretty much the same if they are to be successful.
Now, what I get, but have trouble reconciling is this not so normal view of the world that's been presented recently. Ok, to be specific "denormalized tables." I have spent a lot of time working with databases to ensure they are 3NF and in many cases 4NF, and this whole data warehousing stuff with facts, dimensions, star schemas, snowflakes, blizzards, surrogate keys, step keys, etc. has thrown me off kilter (yes, some of those are made up :).
The idea of adding redundant data in to a table just seems wrong. But, I've never had to produce the type of data that a DW spits out and I guess it's gonna be ok. The thing is, figuring out the balance between too much and too little. Is a star schema sufficient or should it be a snowflake, should there be any normalized tables or strictly dimensions with all redundant information. This is where I am as I attempt to noodle through the design for my current homework assignment. I guess it's time to just head to the whiteboard and work it out.
On that, I'm out for the night. Well, not exactly. Head in at midnight for scheduled IT outages across Afghanistan for a couple of hours. Gonna be a longer night than normal...
(Wow this turned out to be longer than I expected. Need to work on short posts.)
No comments:
Post a Comment