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LUCRUM Does Business Intelligence

LUCRUM does Business Intelligence

Well, what does that mean? What do we provide for our clients? What makes LUCRUM different that other companies who “do BI”? Why should someone call LUCRUM in the first place? What value does LUCRUM focus on? If I was on an elevator and someone asked what we do for BI, what would I say?

Well, depending upon the elevator ride…here is one paragraph for every three floors of a ride about what we at LUCRUM do in the business intelligence space.

We have a proven track record of creating and providing value to our clients because we are highly skilled in both the art of aligning senior leadership around a game-changing passionate vision – a vision that takes their organization to the next level – and the science of synthesizing systems and data from disparate data sources into a focused and leveraged answer to the organization’s most important questions.

We never stop asking how and why. We find that the true questions are often 5 levels deep. We operate at this level – at the most intimate levels, where answers cause real action that changes the course of the organization. And then we never stop asking where. We unhide the data throughout the organization by liberating, assembling and bringing it together in the right manner, at the right time, delivering it to the right people.

We strive to hide complexities and present the answers to those truly valuable questions in a way that enables executives make the most use of their time by pinpointing the problem (or success) quickly. This early warning gives them the competitive edge and allows them to adjust strategy and tactics before their competitors have a chance to react.

In essence – we deliver value in the form of time to our clients. In action this translates as an increase in the critical response time that our clients leverage to act correctly before their competitors, who then are left in the position of reaction.

My closing statements would be:

• Business Intelligence is 100% art and 100% science.
• Truth is never at the surface, its usually pretty deep – but worth the trip.
• Simplicity implies that complexity and intricacy are under control.
• Time is the most precious non-renewable resource on the planet!

Putting all this together – Your organization has very expensive data sitting around decaying as time goes by. What are the most important questions that when answered sheds light on actions that reduce risk, promote change or brings about exponential growth? Align these at the highest levels and don’t rest until you unhide the right data, connect the information and present to the right person at the right time!

BI – Business Intelligence or Bringing Innovation, Better Information, Best Ideas, Big Imaginations, Bold Image… Whatever it means to you, will either help you or your competition.

You decide!

~ Scott Felten

Welcome to Scott’s Oversimplified Data Governance Maturity Model

Why so complicated?

Build from the ground up!

As soon as an organization has one person who cares about data, that organization has data governance – albeit, not at a formal level. But, what is formality…at times it plays out as complexity.  It is up to the organization to seek out and develop data governance at the appropriate levels.  Notice that one person can make a difference and that difference can begin with local data and local systems. With the right leadership, that person is encouraged to evangelize throughout the department.

Once this gets traction, teams are formed that ‘care’. These teams – given the right leadership – then work together and form virtual teams that cross boundaries. This movement from department level stewardship to a virtual team assembling across lines of business is a turning point within an organization.  Lots of great things can now occur – silos begin to be torn down by natural and organic growth that was born by teams collaborating while each learning to share.

Given the right leadership, the next step is the enterprise level. At this level, enterprise standards are created and shared across the organization. Formal groups with the proper framework and the right people must exist.

However, let’s not stop there.  We can no longer consider the limits of our responsibility as defined by the walls of the organization.  Our supply chain is dependent upon our partners (vendors and suppliers).   What is Toyota without their suppliers? We need to push data governance out (up) to the partnership levels!
Note that my ‘oversimplified’ model also contains some levels within each ‘phase’.  Level “a” indicates the notion of containment. This is the mind set of approaching a new concept/threat with the view that one must contain the risk. The next level “b” adds the increased stewardship role of reconciliation. This is the idea of ensuring that the new ‘concept’ is rolled back into the enterprise model in whatever form is necessary. Lastly, the level “c” is the disposition of the group that is seeking how to make things better. Each and every concept is treated with the proactive nature of – Let’s do it the right way!
~ Scott Felten

Data Governance Overview

I love the word ‘data’ but that ‘governance’ part is scary. What do you think about when you hear the word governance…I hear government. Then I think; big, impersonal, political, expensive, complicated, overbearing, and the list goes on.

Of course, we should break that term down a bit and drill into it. The root word for governance is govern and our founding fathers really got it right when they defined our government – which is an organization that governs.

So, a governance structure breaks down to three functions. A data governance group must be well balanced and provide the following ‘services’:
Create rules about data. Ensure that these rules are followed. And finally, deciding what to do when they are broken.  Sound familiar – these three services are in fact the pillars of our government.

Legislative service – Creating laws . Another way to put this is…  publishing policy that consists of best practices. These best practices are built upon standards which were developed from principles that grew from the data governance group.

Executive service – Developing an implementation plan. This plan puts into action the laws.  This action is outlined in a roadmap that contains a strategy. This is socialized to gain traction and momentum and the trek begins.
Judicial service – Dealing with rule breakers. Soon, laws will be broken.  When they are, it is the responsibility of the data governance group to decide the course of action.
More to come…

~ Scott Felten

My Definition of Architecture

What is an architecture? Well, let’s dissect that and see what we come up with. For starters, it is needed before we solve business problems, before we design and build systems and applications and before we put ‘things’ into production. If you build and deploy applications without an architecture, prepare for a long entrenched battle that threads through the realms of data, information, technology, and infrastructure. Saying that, I realize that most organizations do not have a formal architecture, but rather have general principles, standards and practices. This is one reason that IT is so challenging. Meeting agile business needs requires a dependable foundation of decisions.

An architecture is something that is addressed at the enterprise level. It is something that exists across the organization that enables an infrastructure (be it data, information, technology or infrastructure) to work together. So, in simple terms, an architecture is an enterprise wide agreed upon set of standards or direction. This implies that there is an overarching group that has responsibility across business and technical domains. And in turn this is enabled and actualized because someone, somewhere both understood and was able to sell the value of having a solid foundation.

Drilling down a bit further, the ‘agreed upon set of standards or direction’ really boils down to be a set of decisions. These decisions are made at all architectural levels; data, infrastructure, technology and information (to name a few important ones). These standards are in fact agreed upon rules of engagement that must exist. Further, these rules are derived only after a decomposition of systems (existing and non-existing) into its individual units. This decomposition is complete when each design orientation is at its most granular level. This is different for the different architectures.

The idea of an architecture is to break systems down to the specialist levels, so that these specialists can address the system (application) within their specific domain. Meaning, developers can receive requirements and think them through in the context of their specific architecture. And data folks can work from a common set of dependable rules of engagement that when followed across the enterprise provides them with a solid foundation on which to build, knowing that integration points, naming standards, metadata nomenclatures, taxonomies, etc. are there to rely on. The application folks can depend upon the architecture for proper building techniques, technology strategy, supporting documentation and so on. The information folks rely on the horizontal assurance that the right levels of metadata is in place and they anticipate the use of data to be consistent and so on.

So, an architecture is really a set of decisions that must be made across the enterprise, hopefully before the release of chaos (in the form of applications and system) at the most granular of forms so that it helps to manage this chaos from the bottom up as opposed to the top down.  Managing from the bottom up is done via principles and standards, methodologies and best practices, governance and stewardship. Managing top down is just that, a downward spiral that is manifested by political infighting, protectionism, stagnation and a complete stoppage of the value chain (IT no longer can meet scope, costs, and schedules).

Happy architecting!

~ Scott Felten

Architect’s Outline

Someone asks, “What do you do for a living?”

You respond, “I’m an architect.”

They reply, “Really, what buildings have you built?”

You reply, “I’m in IT. We build systems.”

They respond, either “Oh, my brother in law fixes computers too!” or “Oh, my friend is a computer programmer.”

I have had many of these types of conversations. Of course, I look at them as a learning situation, a chance to teach someone the finer points of IT and to introduce some of those concepts. But, in the end, they mostly still don’t get it.

They really need to have a dozen years of war wounds, they need to get their hands involved and develop a thick gnarly skin, grizzled by years of scratching and scrapping to get things done. This level of understanding is best learned by participation.

To know the intricacies of this field, one must be driven to understand how things work and why things break. Why can’t we segment our customers this way or that way? We have the data! Why are we not able to align hard project costs, labor, revenue and customer attributes to get a 360 degree view of our business – our competitors do? It’s not until you are faced with these big challenges that you pick up your weapons and go to battle.

Well, I could go one with these stories, but my real point is that even dealing with IT managers that have 10 or 20+ years of experience, they often times still don’t get it. In this blog, I’ll introduce the role of the architect, or better said, to lay the foundation for some other blogs by outlining the architecture role.

Here is an outline of architecture. Please feel free to remind me if I am missing any, as I am writing this on the bus on my way to work.

Architects
•    Solutions Architect (Business Solutions Architect)
•    Data Architect (Integration Architect, Data Warehouse Architect)
•    Information Architect (Reporting Architect, Metadata Architect)
•    Infrastructure Architect (Technology Architect, Systems Architect)
•    Applications Architect (Software Architect)
•    Strategic Architect (Enterprise Data Architect, Chief Architect, Business Architect)

Next post “What is an architecture?”

Near future posts will contain the role, value or services provided by each architect. Stay tuned and hopefully we can have some great discussions!

Happy Building!

~ Scott Felten

My 9 secrets of successful leadership

I have lead many teams over the years and have had a good measure of success. Early on in life I have found what I consider is the key to leadership. According to Ayn Rand’s “The Virtue of Selfishness”, she asserts that being selfish is a real virtue (thus the fancy title)…that everyone acts in their own, best self interest. While her conclusions from there are suspect to me, I do see some value in what she is stating.

The Mouse and the Hippo, a parable about two vendors on the opposite ends of the spectrum.

Once upon a time, not so long ago, in a land of IT outsourcing and relationship management, there were two vendors. One vendor was named Mouse and the other named Hippo – I have changed the names to protect the innocent (hopefully you got that already).  My client (who will remain nameless), contracted with each to provide two major applications for an important global business program designed to bring all parts of the business together so that they were able to engage global clients as a true global company.

Now the mouse was very fast and nimble. When obstacles arouse, Mouse was able to change directions quickly. Even when there was no clear direction, Mouse ran and ran he did, as fast as he could. Everyone liked Mouse’s ability to run. Seeing Mouse run, people felt that things were moving, that things were good. It didn’t take a lot of cash to get Mouse running, he ran and ran and ran. When we told him to run to the tree, he would run to the tree – then once he got there, he would add a dance, a spin and run to other trees close by. The problem was that we didn’t want the dance or the spin. Soon we found that even Mouse running to the nearby trees wasn’t needed. Mouse spent a lot of his energy spinning, dancing and visiting nearby trees.  In fact so much energy was spent doing these things that Mouse eventually ran out of energy before he got to the tree. Mouse then decided to only ran half way to the tree, do his spins and dances and wander around the nearby trees. Mouse’s best attributes were also his undoing! You see, in the end, Mouse was not properly managing his energy – he would use up his resources. Even though we said to simply run to the tree, he would let us know that he was also going to do his spins, dances and visit nearby trees.  This seemed very good to us because we were getting more than we asked for and this seemed like a good value. But, when his energy levels were running low, Mouse was left with no other option than to economize his actions, which resulted in poor results.  In the end, no one felt confident that Mouse could deliver. His heart was in the right place – he wanted to give us value and do whatever we needed, but his head was not so much engaged.

Now Hippo, on the other hand, could also run and run very fast, but he had a hard time getting going. Hippo required a lot of push. To get Hippo running, we would have to determine where he was running and what indicated that he was running. Also, we had to have checkpoints along the way to show that he was in fact running.  Everyone liked this attribute of Hippo – sure, a lot of work up front, but once he was in motion, we all felt confident that Hippo would get there.  Soon we found that even though the tree that he was to run to was fully defined and checkpoints along the way to indicate that he was making forward progress were set, when things came up and we needed to change directions it was a big problem. You see, Hippo could not simply change directions.  He would come to a complete stop first – and even this took some time. Then we would need to go through all those steps again; defining the tree, setting the interim progress indicators and getting everyone to push him so that he would get going. To make matters even worse, even the very small changes required these efforts and Hippo spent his resources quickly so that even the most simplest of changes cost a lot. In the end, no one had energy (budget) left to keep Hippo moving in the right direction accounting for small changes along the way.

The bottom line

The Mouse will over promise, seem to over deliver, but will soon run out of money. This business model can’t support anything longer than a fantastic looking sprint – then they implode and the relationship (or their business itself) is ended. A long term partnership requires a two way commitment. Sure you can take advantage of short-term gains but the ramp up of new partnerships is expensive. Plus the gained knowledge was not able to be leveraged and is lost.

The Hippo will always look to protect their top and bottom lines. This makes it hard for a partnership centered around value for the client. Since most of their effort is around ensuring their survival, adapting to business change and delivering quick value becomes very expensive or worse, they get bogged down in such a level of detail that they can’t deliver at all.

The good vendor is a hybrid; half mouse and half hippo. Structure is necessary but it can kill. Likewise, no structure gives agility but without discipline (structure) it leads to failure.

Manage your vendors; exploit their strengths, determine their weaknesses and lead them in the journey of ‘partnership’. (Keep in mind that ‘partnership’ is not so much of a destination, rather it’s in fact a journey – a common path that two parties walk, both correcting each other and reaping the benefits of success together.)

 

Epilogue

Mouse is still here because they have us (their client) at the center of their focus. But they are in trouble, both internally (keeping top and bottom lines in check) and externally (poor reputation). They are used for very short sprints. We realize their weaknesses and provide safety nets (extra budgets). Scope is well managed and talked about often to keep them on track. They are learning. Pain is a hard teacher but without pain, how does one know the problem areas.  

Hippo is no longer around. You see, they had themselves at the center of their focus. The protection that they employed revealed itself as unbending agreements, over complicated change management processes, and expensive addendums. This quickly led to an adversarial relationship and who wants a vendor who won’t commit to an equal partnership.

Once you find the perfect Mouse-Hippo Hybrid, clone them!

~Scott Felten

 

 

Team Journey: Steps from people to real team results!

I sat down with LUCRUM’s Eric Duell a couple of years ago and talked about the value of teams. Eric is a principal consultant and specializes in executive alignment sessions – but is the guru of communications. The truth of our conversation has never left me. He tied together results of a team through proper leadership and stepped me through the teams ‘ascent’. This talk of ours was so powerful, that a couple years later, I chose to work at LUCRUM.

I don’t want to steal Eric’s thunder but there are dependencies that are really worth noting. I’ll just highlight them below:

Step 1: Show each person that they are part of the team and that they can contribute to the success and problems of the team. This expectation should be set from the beginning – this gives them the freedom to move to the next step.

Step 2: People need to feel that their contribution is part of the team’s success. Sure, the ownership is on that person to ensure that they are ‘engaged’ with the team, but it’s also on the leader – to make sure that the person has the right avenues to contribute. Ensure that contributions are appreciated…publically.

Step 3: Once these contributions are shown, this build trust within the team. This is a key point because without trust the team is guarded and people don’t share. A solid foundation of trust is necessary for any team that wants to be highly successful.

Step 4:  Now that we have trust, the team can have honest and open conversations. Debates are not win/lose, rather they are healthy and passionate. This level of communication reveals the right data for the team to act upon.

Step 5:  The leader now has the foundation to have a commitment by each member to the team. Here we are focusing on a common course of action, the holdouts, cowboys and dissenters are not present…for the team’s value is realized and we think of the team success first.

Step 6:  Now that we are committed, we can be accountable. Too many times this foundation is shortcutted and we have tentative accountability; one foot here and one foot there. But, this team is now in a position to expect real accountability and forms the right partnerships to help each other.

Step 7:  Once we are at this level of accountability, we are ready to do what the team was designed for; looking for the best solution with a focused team. Here is where the power is and this focus is how to concentrate the talents, passions, desires and energy of the highly successful team!

So, you see, this progression from person to maximum results is framed by real team development and leadership – but must progress through clearly defined stages. This is a strategy we strive for at LUCRUM. When you peel back all that extra baggage, we are left with real people who contribute within real teams to focus on real value for our clients with a real focus.

Imagine a team with a missing piece. What if we did not expect a team member to perform? What if we did not appreciate contributions? How would it be if the team could not have open conversations and the real data was hidden for fear of rejection. Could the team be committed if we could not talk openly? If people were not accountable and not held accountable, could we succeed? Any missing piece above would cause the team to focus on their own agendas and not on finding the best possible solution.

This model was truly one of the reasons that I chose LUCRUM to take my career to the next level. The commitment to teams is core to what we are all about.

~ Scott Felten 

Part 2, Collaboration “It’s not about technology” – expanded! (Statement 2)

If collaboration was about the technology, then…

We would be focusing on how to support collaboration’s needs, when collaboration was meant to support our needs.  Our organization ends up working for the ‘collaboration implementation’, when in fact the implementation’s entire existence was meant to work for the organization. It is completely upside-down. We have all felt that pain, when ‘systems’ miss their mark – While they do bring lots of change to the organization, its in the wrong direction!

 

As an IT group, we are now relegated to simply supplying a service/product and not partnering with the business. Anyone can sell and supply a service or product – this is a commodity. Sure there is some value here, but far greater is the value that a partnership brings. Don’t miss out on those partnership opportunities that can align an organization’s strategy and tactical plans. These are the opportunities that can separate us from our competitors!

 

We miss the big picture when we focus on technology first. In my post “Part 2, Collaboration Tactical Verticals – expanded! (Statement 10)”, we see that collaboration is an entire buffet of technology options and configurations, and just like making a good salad, we need to add the components that work for us – not someone else. Abstracting technology out of collaboration allows us to focus on the need, then to develop strategic initiatives for the different “domains of collaboration”. The best strategy for instant messaging may be to simply turn it loose in the organization. But, that same strategy doesn’t hold up for work flow where we may want to introduce a common enterprise taxonomy with rules and metadata integration. This abstraction of technology from collaboration also allows us to better match the value and return on investment with our efforts and the impact it brings to the organization’s culture.

 

Thinking about technology and making decisions in this upside-down context, will lead us to a situation where we are constrained to the features that exist in the product that we chose. For in this context, we consider first the features and then the need – we are thinking of the solution prior to identifying the problem. We are hammers and everything looks like a nail. Throw any analogy out there you want, at the end of the day, we put all our focus on the solution and try to force fit it to a ‘problem’. What we should be doing is looking at the business problems we are faced with. We need to spend time understanding people, teams, and our culture.

 

The key is not to loose business agility; by having a true collaboration strategy, we keep this agility – responding quickly to the ever changing marketplace by applying the best solutions at the right time.

It’s always easier to first seek technology, to get that initial shot of momentum. But what is it worth to you. Technology connects our strategy to tactics!? If you think of it this way, we can develop our strategy over time with the business leaders without regards to the complexities of technology. Then at the appropriate time, we consider the impacts of our strategic directions with our technologists. This way we have the business people driving the business and the technologists getting us there. This abstraction allows leaders to lead on both sides of the equation. The business leaders will benefit by not being constrained by the dependencies on technologies and are set free to vision us to the future. The business person will say “Don’t tell me what I can’t do…just let me set our direction”!  And the technologists will benefit by having the clarity of a strategy without the burden of business strategy development. Then the technologist will say “Don’t tell me how to do it…just tell me what you want”! It’s a win/win situation.

 

Now the magic is to meet in the middle and develop that partnership!  Click here for my 13 points regarding collaboration.

 

~ Scott Felten

Part 2, Collaboration Value Alignment – expanded! (Statement 6)

“Ready, Fire, Aim!” is all too often the norm. Yes, we were ready and yes we fired, but without aim, what are we hitting? Activity does in fact breed productivity, but we need to be focused.

Statement 6, “Collaboration Value Alignment!”, Make sure that you revisit with the sponsor(s) often to ensure that the value they expect is in fact the value you are working towards. Business changes; adapt your strategy and plan accordingly!

Did you ever hear that quote, “Don’t just sit there, do something!”? Well, regarding collaboration it’s more accurate to say “Don’t just do something, sit there!”. It’s that ‘sitting-there thinking’ that is the key. In my post today, I will talk about the missing part – alignment. Alignment (or focus or aim) depicts and agreed approach; where everyone is pulling the same side of the rope. It’s both establishing the goal AND getting that goal shared by others (sponsor, senior leadership) at a deep level. When we approach anything of a complicated manner, its best to do so in an iterative fashion. With collaboration, we need to take advantage of that iteration cycle to ensure that we are still on track.

Collaboration is not an overnight installation. Rather, it’s a cultural change, a transition. Transitions take time. It is not a light switch that we suddenly switch to the on position. This transition time must be reconciled against many factors, such as:

1. Competition requires the business to make changes. What was once true today, may not be valid a month or quarter from now. In order to compete, the business must make these changes. So, a risk for a collaboration effort is to be acting on ideas, goals, objectives and expectations that grow stale. Understanding the value that collaboration brings in the context of meeting and surpassing our competition is core to establishing a strong practice that really delivers. 
2. The political landscape ebbs and flows. Strong leaders are vital to momentum within an organization. This momentum can be used for collaboration. However, as we all know, tactics are born of strategy and strategy is an outgrowth of leadership. So, a risk that we must mitigate around this potential political change is that we don’t solely hitch the collaboration effort to the current political momentum. Yes, we need to take advantage of the ‘current momentum’ that is riding within our organization, but make sure that momentum is monitored and that our collaboration efforts are loosely coupled to it.
3. A technology is not the substitute for collaboration, it’s not about technology at all.  The danger here is that we use the words collaboration and collaboration technology synonymously. We need to abstract technology away from our collaboration strategy. (When we add it back, it becomes tactical.) If we tie those two concepts together, one risk is that our strategy will be killed when technology changes. We need to have a real strategy that hold without specific technology. This way, we can make strategic changes at a place where it makes it possible to keep our senior leadership focused on strategy, value and direction and not burdening them with the complexities and intricacies of technology… This way senior leadership tells us what they want and not how to do it.

Bringing these few points together leads me to my conclusion about alignment and collaboration value. The value that collaboration brings today may not be the expected value of tomorrow. To ensure that we are always right on, we will need to set up a method of keeping our value proposition fresh. Fresh vegetables sitting around rot. The same thing will happen to the best collaboration strategy – if it sits around, it will rot; decay over time to something that is both not desirable and not useable. Eventually, one will have to simply throw it away. This is why the best produce is purchased daily. We need to have this same mindset in our relationship with senior leadership. How do we keep our stuff fresh? How do we match their value to our strategy?

1. Work with senior leadership to develop a value proposition that is expressed in measurable terms. Depending upon your organization, you may have to set a vision (but let them own it) or drive their vision or take notes and direct/confirm their understanding.
2. Plan a strategy that stands without technology (actual products). At a high level, get directional support from your senior leadership (governance, sponsor, CxOs).
3. Formulate a tactical plan by completing the future vision, adding products and services.
4. Put together an internal marketing plan and begin to socialize the message. Make sure you know your audience and state it in WIIFM (what’s in it for me) terms.
5. Iterate through the plan. Break the plan at strategic points along the way. Use this opportunity to communicate with your senior leadership both what has been done and what is ahead. Create trust by being vulnerable. It’s precisely at this point in time that you need to reach deep to extract from them their value expectations. Don’t hide anything here, we are all-in together! The right conversations must take place at this time. We need to ensure that we are all committed to a common course of action. Listen to the things that you don’t really want to hear. Make adjustments.
6. Update your strategy to reflect changes in value expectations and proceed to step 3, tactical planning and so on…

Remember, it’s not enough to establish value and conquer. It will serve no one to ignore those changes that we see or hear about, hoping that we can keep on our current course. We need to add that ‘sit there’ break point where we open up to senior leadership and get real vulnerable. Of course no one enjoys that potential course change. But who does it benefit if we set the original course to Hawaii when at some point everyone thought we were heading on an Alaskan cruise!

Alignment is the art of frequent and vulnerable communication with a constant reaching for understanding and direction by all. When leveraged around collaboration value, we will bring our organization to new heights!  Click here for my 13 points regarding collaboration

Dress appropriately; we are going on an Alaskan cruise!

~ Scott Felten

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