CPO Blog

The Case for Modeling

tony — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 21:21:11 +0000

I got involved in a couple of threads lately discussing the merits of modeling in light of new technology. I did fill up some space on those threads, but will be merciful and put my semi-rant here.
As a James Martin Alumni, I got to see the benefits of modeling at its best. When used properly in a disciplined approach (such as information engineering, rapid application development, agile development, etc.) modeling leads to two things:
- Faster overall development time
- Increase quality / flexibility
OK, for the folks that about to say the extra work of modeling, how can that make it faster. Quite simply, modeling facilitates higher levels of understanding and communication within a development team and when that team communicates outside of its circle. The data model is still the best mode of communicating business data relationships.
As far as increasing quality, like any other engineering discipline, thinking before doing is a universal tenet. This does not mean modeling in of itself makes for higher quality, but it can be said that modeling gives a proven mechanism for controlling quality and can allow for more flexible expansion of an application.

How can we learn from history?
Back in the days of mainframes, organizations smartened up and stopped hacking code and embraced modeling and methodologies. This was starting to really take hold around 1990, but then all hell broke loose on the technology end and client server was upon us. For some reason, the leaders of the client server tool market (powerbuilder, visual basic, delphi, etc.) said modeling was only for mainframes and the technology made modeling redundant and/or obsolete (does this sound similar to some of the hype in DW now). Fast forward to 1999 and all that powerbuilder stuff was being rebuilt (with funding from Y2K).
The lesson, technology can help, but cannot replace modeling.

It is true that we are going through tremendous changes in the DW/BI/MDM space which will undoubtedly have some impact on the way we use data models (logical and physical). But to assume that technology will make modeling obsolete is destine to repeat the sins of the past.

CPO on B-eye Network

tony — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 18:48:12 +0000

After keynoting TDWI in San Diego, I had a chance to sit down with Paul Kautza of TDWI and talk about CPO and the upcoming TDWI event. You can see the video here.

TDWI Notes and Research

tony — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 15:37:24 +0000

Thanks to all who attended TDWI in San Diego this week. Even with all my travel woes (22 hours from Maine to California), it was a pleasure keynoting Monday morning.
Also, thanks to all who stopped by for a book signing at the booth. Please email me with your comments/feedback.

I did have a call to action. As I said in my keynote, I am starting some academic research around performance management and IT strategic alignment and have some room for a few more companies to participate in this. It is an academic study (not selling you anything!) and your company can be blinded. You will also get full results of the research. Please contact me directly if you want to know more or participate.

Safe travels.

TDWI Countdown and Agenda

tony — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 12:05:47 +0000

Are you going to TDWI San Diego next week? Set the alarm for Monday morning and catch my keynote of Chief Performance Officer, A Role Whose Time Has Come. Also, just added a book signing on the expo floor on Tuesday afternoon, at the Oracle booth.
Hope to see you there.

CPO - HBR Style

tony — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 20:17:06 +0000

Tom Davenport talks of the Rise of Chief Performance Officer in HBR Blog. Having Tom validate the CPO concept is a true seal of approval that the CPO is here.

Achieving Value for CPO with Analysis Chains

tony — Mon, 18 May 2009 14:10:27 +0000

In the latest issue of Journal of Management Excellence, I published an article about the use of analysis chains in understanding and achieving value in an organization. Analysis chains are a method for combining cause-and-effect relationships and technology feasibility. Read the article here.

CPO Redux

tony — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 16:08:37 +0000

After the withdrawl of Nancy Killefer from the federal CPO position, President Obama has nominated Jefferey Zients for the position.
Glad to see the position did not go away with Ms. Killefer’s withdrawl.
Confused about what a CPO does? See my interview on Foxnews.

Hunch Support Systems (HSS)

tony — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 18:10:38 +0000

I caught up with an old colleague last week and got talking about a project. His user group was using the newly deployed BI and reporting system in an interesting way. They had deployed mostly in an ad-hoc with some built in analytics.

The way he described it was a “Hunch Support System”. Basically the managers were coming up with hunches on how what they needed to do next and then supporting this hunch with an adhoc query to corroborate with the results. In one way it is quite an underuse of the capabilities in the system considering they had implemented full blown BI and Applications, but at least they are using the system. For this group of users, the HSS has become a bridge for them to start using the system.

Hopefully they will move beyond HSS and start using the complete system. I have a hunch they will !

Flushing out leading indicators

tony — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 15:11:40 +0000

I was recently talking with a relative who works the finance department in the waste management industry, particularly in the portable toilets you see at construction sites, events, etc. We got on the subject of the economy and he had some interesting observations.
Because so much of his business is tied into new construction, he said his business trending became a great leading indicator for the overall economy. He could see from his business trending downward in the individual new construction.
Interesting enough, with the stimulus, we will probably see this leading indicator increase because of the amount of roadwork type of projects.
The economy is full of these anecdotal leading indicators. It would be great to have BI capture and model these at a macro level.

The CPO is Gone, Long Live the CPO

tony — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 19:27:07 +0000

With the stepping down a few weeks ago of Nancy Killefer, the topic of Chief Performance Officer has seemed to vanished from the front page of the newspapers. CPO though, has picked up more steam than ever in the Private sector. Accountability in a commercial organization for all performance seems to have become quite a popular topic.
A great example is Wyndham’s recent press release where Daniel del Olmo as Chief Performance Officer of Wyndham hotels. See press release here. Daniel is taking performance front and center in his organization to navigate through the changing times. It is an affirmation at the CEO level that managing performance is more important than ever and visibility is needed at the C-level of an organization.