Business Intelligence / Big Data Trends Part II

Earlier this week I evaluated an article about the business intelligence (BI) trends for 2013. In this post I noted that the 2013 trends remain for 2014. Today I came across a new article from a different author and publication commenting on the top big data trends for 2014. Guess what? They are almost identical.

Here are the author's big data trends for 2014:

1. Mobility driving investments
2. Increased use of private and hybrid clouds
3. Internet of things pushing demand
4. Employees becoming primary users
5. Data-Centric applications becoming the norm
6. Search used as unstructured query language

While there are differences between these two lists (primarily due to the focus of big data rather than BI in the most recent article) it is clear that the same trends for BI/Big Data for 2013 remain for 2014.

Business Intelligence is Still Important

At the end or beginning of each year journalist often write articles predicting events or trends that will emerge during the upcoming year. It is fun to go back to these articles and see how accurate they were.

I came across an article today that was written this time last year predicting the top business intelligence trends for 2013. The seven predicted trends were:

1. Expansion and evolution of dashboards
2. Improved self-service BI
3. Increased BI adoption driven by mobile users
4. Significant application of in-memory processing
5. Growing interest in big data
6. Cloud options become legitimate options
7. Development of shared data applications

Reading this article and considering the current state of the business intelligence (BI) field it is safe to say the author was not far off. However, it is also safe to say each of these trends have not completely matured and continue to slowly develop. While big data still appears frequently in the headlines it seems to lost its mystique and become a better understood as further expansion of BI.

If I hadn't noticed the date the article was written (or the year 2013 in the title of the article) I would have assumed this article was written to predict the trends of 2014. Will 2014 be the year of big changes in the business intelligence field, will the field continue to slowly evolve, or have we seen the peak of BI? I doubt that BI has fully matured or will go away; my safe prediction for 2014 is that these trends from 2013 will continue for 2014.

Questioning Project Manager Qualifications

In a recent study by Ahsan, Ho, and Khan (2013) the project management competencies described in the literature and professional standards was compared to the competencies listed as requirements or attributes in project manager job listings. The authors described these competencies in terms of Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities (KSAs).

The authors found some similarities between the KSAs in the literature and standards and the KSAs identified in the job advertisements. Below are summaries of the KSAs in the literature and standards and the KSAs in the job advertisements:

Top 15 KSAs from Literature and Professional Standards

1. Leadership
2. Effective communication
3. Project technical expertise
4. Team building and management
5. Planning skill
6. Flexibility
7. Organization skill
8. Decision-Making skill
9. Management skill
10. Delegation
11. Analytical abilities
12. Problem solving
13. Coping with situations
14. Interpersonal skills
15. Stakeholder management

Top 10 KSAs from Job Advertisements

1. Communication
2. Technical skills
3. Stakeholder management
4. Cost management
5. Time management
6. Educational background
7. Planning
8. Leadership
9. Team building and management
10. Certification

While the authors noted some of the job advertisement KSAs differed slightly across region and industry, these KSAs remain key attributes of the project manager positions.

I think the study is important as an indicator that our project manager job advertisements are not completely consistent with the KSAs from the literature and standards. The KSAs associated with project success are not always included in job descriptions and the literature and standards KSAs don't always cover the KSAs many organizations consider desirable for project managers. For example, cost management, time management, educational background, and certifications were not identified in the literature as key KSAs but are included in the top KSAs in the job postings.

So why are these differences important? The authors suggested the literature and standards need to better cover these KSAs. While I agree the literature and standards should evaluate the gaps in the KSAs between these two groups, industry should also evaluate these differences.

The KSAs identified in standards and literature are associated with studies linking KSAs to project success. If these KSAs differ from industry job advertisements then perhaps the industries are not considering the best set of KSAs to include in their project manager searches. The point here is that both industries and the research community must consider this gap and reevaluate the key KSAs needed to be a successful project manager.

Project Change Management Workshop

Yesterday I presented a project management workshop at The College of St. Scholastica's St. Cloud (MN) campus. At this workshop I argued the importance of managing change in the project environment. These changes include large changes to the project scope, scope creep, feature creep, and changes to the business or external environment.

Here are the links to my workshop presentation slides and a simple change request form template we used at the workshop.

Competencies of a Project Manager

I came across a blog post the other day asking if project managers are born or made.  The author answered the question by evaluating the core competencies of a project manager.  I agreed with the author in that these competencies are indeed the four skill areas needed to be a successful project manager.

1. Functional Knowledge: Understanding the business domain area, the supporting processes, and the affect the project has on the functional area.
2. Technical Expertise: This doesn't just apply to IT projects.  The project manager must posses knowledge of tools, techniques, and processes used in the project to develop, apply, and implement the project deliverables.
3. Project Management Experience: Although every project is different, our experience in projects helps to anticipate issues, learn to adapt to change, and solve problems encountered in projects.  Experience can be gained through previous project experience as well as certifications or continued education.
4. Leadership: Project managers must be able to coordinate, motivate, and direct the project team as well as solve handle the adversity among project stakeholders.  While this competency may not exist in everyone, experience does provide opportunities to develop.

So, the author's answer to the question was that project managers are both made and born.  Project management competencies must be developed over time but there are inherit intangibles needed to succeed.

Intellectual Capital Ontology

There is overlap between the related fields of knowledge management (KM) and business intelligence (BI) and this overlap frequently causes confusion. I consider business intelligence a form of knowledge management and both BI and KM are practices of intellectual capital.

We hear many terms associated with intellectual capital practices such as text mining, collaboration, data warehousing, big data, etc. In order to better conceptualize how these different intellectual capital practices fit together I constructed an ontology diagram. The diagram below depicts the structure of intellectual capital and identifies how I see these concepts are related.

Benefits of Knowledge Management

Before investing time and resources into new technologies and innovations organizations must have a clear understanding of the benefits offered by the technology or innovation.  We must be certain the benefits can justify the investment costs and that the benefits align with the organization's strategic needs.

Last week I was reading a knowledge management book and came across a good summary of the benefits of knowledge management.  The list below is paraphrased from the text:

1. Help stimulate innovation
2. Increase an organization's agility and adaptability
3. Develop institutional memory to prevent loss of knowledge
4. Create and grow a sense of community
5. Enhance internal and external effectiveness
6. Improve decision making

This list may not be exhaustive but it provides a good overview of the types of advantages offered through effective knowledge management practices.  This is a good list to have in mind when organizations contemplate investing in a knowledge management practice.