Tracking in the Enterprise – Correlation versus Causation

We've got the activity captured, and now we have "effectiveness" ratings for the people in the group - how will we put them together and see a relationship? Mechanically, this is a simple XY scatter graph - a standard chart type in both Excel and Google Docs. Let's take a look at a sample data set that illustrates the idea: This is the picture I expected to see: the more you use the system (the X axis), the more results…

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Tracking in the Enterprise – Logging Utilization Simply and Consistently

We're trying use metrics to visualize the correlation between system use and business results - any system, regardless of the platform / technology - and we'd like to draw the same picture of input vs. results for any system. I'm stealing some inspiration from Tufte here - let's keep the story simple, clean, and consistent, so my audience can focus on the question (WIIFM). And it's a meant to be a universal question - doesn't matter what system we are…

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Data Visualization: Why (1 of 2)

Between business requests and breathless vendors, I am getting caught up in the growing tide of interest in "data visualizations" - managers requesting highly interactive, highly graphical, highly intuitive analytics interfaces (think Minority Report). But what are we trying to accomplish here? We keep on hearing about "executive dashboards", a heads-up display of in-my-face KPIs, or statistics and exceptions delivered automatically to my e-mail and/or Blackberry. However, when I ask management folks to get a bit more specific - how…

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Home Development Workstation – Part 3

See also ... Home Development Workstation - Part 1 Home Development Workstation - Part 2 Ok, here's where we put the rest of these boxes, switches, wires, and other assorted doo dads in their place. Again, the witty reader will note that I am following along with Jeff Atwood's Build a PC posts from last summer, just adding some color commentary and my own personal notes. Hard Drives, Optical Drives When disassembling the case, I found one of the silicon…

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Home Development Workstation – Part 2

See also ... Home Development Workstation - Part 1 If You Build It ... For starters, I give major props to Jeff Atwood's series on building a PC, because the step-by-step assembly notes, and the overriding "calm down, it's like Legos!" tone ... all very comforting. I tend to be a "ready, fire, aim" kinda guy on my home technology projects, so a little common sense around the electrical equipment is always good. I won't replicate all of his build-in-process…

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Home Development Workstation – Part 1

Why I think that every techie should go through the experience of building up a desktop workstation from the ground level. Maybe it's because I date back to the days of the PC XT, when computer support duties regularly had us tearing down cases, changing jumper settings and plugging in individual chips for memory expansions. Mainstream p0wnership of the desktop's guts may also be a dying art form (notwithstanding) - in the days of ubiquitous WiFi, shrinking notebooks, Blackberries and…

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Continuing Education Pareto Principle (50/30/20)

(okay, I mentioned this a couple of weeks ago, just wanted to expound on the idea ...) Everyone's heard of Pareto's wonderful 80/20 rule. I've identified a variant of that rule that applies to all sorts of "continuing education" - like presentations at a trade conference, or skills training for new software packages. It really struck me when I was in grad school, slogging through Accounting and Business Law and marvelling at the range of difficulty in the two subjects.…

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Build a Framework: Your chart junk is my roadmap / vision statement

I remember in the late 90's, seeing many examples of the little train of wedgies that folks used to characterize their business processes: I've used them myself (some of the above samples are mine, I'm comfortable in admitting it) - of course, I typically don't make this stuff up, I adapt from other examples, like everyone else. As I searched for a reasonable picture / schematic / "framework" for a "supply chain", I stumbled across what I believe to be…

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Hand writing recognition – harder than colored bubbles

As I sit in meetings, I find myself thinking through "process" of what we are doing at this moment, as much as I think about what the meeting is about. Then I am writing these short notes to myself for future blog items. Good? Bad? Psychotic? It makes me wish for easier tools to convert notes to complete text - but look at this chicken scratch ... I like these pseudo-postings for process think because I am lazy at heart,…

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