Frank Buytendijk Blog

Graham Davidson reacts:

"Sticking to the plan is useless, you need to stick to reality, that is changing every day". How often have I heard that as an excuse for not delivering. The trouble is that many people confuse the plan with the deliverable, find the plan doesn't work any more and, rather than modify the plan, fail to deliver. Mostly, in a yearly cycle, the destination hasn't changed, just the method of getting there. As always the best answer lies somewhere between a rigid plan and hoping to take advantage of opportunity and, as always, people use one of these extremes for operating at the other."

In fact, I fully agree with Graham, it must be a choice of words. The plan is often mistaken for the goal, if I may paraphrase indeed. The goal should be clear. Unless there are serious discontinuities, the goal remains unchanged.

What changes all the time, is the way how to get there. A plan must be dynamic. I like the comparison with a term from the military: "strategic intent". The mission is clear, the goal is shared by everyone, and all commander's are aware of each other's task. But can you give detailed marching orders? No. The terrain changes, the moves of the enemy can't be fully predicted. As Field Marshall Von Moltke said: "any battle plan doesn't survive first contact with the enemy".

The trick to a good plan-to-act management process is continuous experimentation. More on that you can find here.

frank

Ramiro Kollmannsperger reacts:

In the last paragraph you compare the EPM Index Results from Respondents who give different Feedback on the importance and use of BI. I was just wondering how significant these found values really are, considering first: that the result of the ones who appreciate the value of BI is not so significantly higher than the result of the ones who don't believe in it, and second: considering that the ones scoring higher only said that BI is "important" or a "major tool". So they like BI, great! But can we be sure that their better outcome is really due to the importance they assign to their BI Tools? Next thing that bothers me a little bit is that those who appreciated the importance of BI are not sooo much better off than those who didn't. So what can we (BI professionals) do, to improve their Management Performance (naturally, i would aim to do it in ways that reflect visibly in the EPM-Index score, otherwise sceptics could claim there's no ROI)?

I don't think it is possible to claim causality, indeed. You can't say that if you find BI important, they have better results. You could say that if you find BI important, you find EPM more important. Somewhat tautological of nature, though. What is clear is that there is a correlation between the two. BI impacts the EPM index. The outcomes of the index influences the importance of BI, and there -- I am sure -- is a third controlling variable called "good management" ;-).

Regarding the significance of the differences, this needs some more explanation. There are multiple research designs possible. We chose to ask for people's perception and self-assessment, as it is perception that drives awareness and change.

The side-effect is that this flattens the scores a little. People are less likely to score themselves below let's say 5, and less likely to score themselves above for instance 8. However, in combination with a sample size of 800, and some statistical validation, the differences are still significant.

Thank you for asking!

frank

When working with customers, the workshops about BI, data warehousing or EPM are increasingly about “maturity”. There are more customers who are beyond the phase of “business case”, or “where to start”, or “how to…”. The key question is “what’s next”.

I looked into a number of maturity models out there, and some of them are better than others. I particularly like the maturity model of TDWI (The Data Warehousing Institute). Detailed, well thought through.

The point that I want to make is that most of the models assume the last phase is called ‘mature’ (maybe that is why they are called maturity models). But let’s compare this to real life. After maturity comes aging, and in the end we die. So where are the stages “… becomes old, stale and goes away”, or “… merges with XYZ”?

I don’t think business performance, or maturity models are linear of nature. That at one moment you reach the top, and then you stay there. “Ta ta! You’re in the High Performance Stage now”. Progress comes with ebbs and floods. At most moments in time, your BI will be in some kind of equilibrium, it supports what it needs to support. And all the time, there are various influences. Technology moves on, users progress and ask for more (or less), the organization changes, new best practices emerge, etc. This disrups the current balance, and then you try to create a new equilibrium. Sometimes this is an improvement, and sometimes it is a step back. Like with many things in life.

The best example I can give is how the key issue in BI was presented to me twenty years ago: “Users are spending too much time collecting the data, and not enough time analyzing it”. Today, this is still the case. Has there been no progress? I think there has been HUGE progress, and with the increased business complexity, data volumes, multiple types of users ad styles of delivery, it is fantastic that BI has been able to at least keep up.

Everything you don’t put energy in, decays. Buildings, living creatures, friendships, everything. Full stop. BI is not different. There is improvement along the way, but you’re never done.