Keynote Articles

Keynote

There are many strengths of the blog format, however one weakness is its focus on the recent at the expense of the relevant. This section of the site seeks to remedy this problem by providing a grouped list of what I am going to call Keynote Articles.

There are a lot of different articles on this blog. Some are to do with new functionality that is available; some are brief notes about what I have been up to, or am planning to do; some link to news elsewhere on the Internet, most often with some commentary from me. Keynote Articles are what is left. That is original pieces written by me based on my own experience and expertise. These types of articles form the meat of this site.

I have tried to group these Keynote Articles into general areas, with some pieces appearing in more than one place. These areas are as follows:

  1. Business Intelligence & Analytics
  2. Cultural Transformation
  3. IT / Business Alignment and IT Strategy
  4. General Articles
  5. Industry Commentary
  6. Social Media
  7. Data Visualisation & Infographics
  8. Chief Data Officer
  9. Statistics & Modelling
  10. Interviews

Inside each area, the entries appear in chronological order, i.e. the reverse of the main blog.

 
1. Business Intelligence & Analytics
• Business Intelligence and Transparency
• Will the economic crisis actually be positive for BI?
• Scaling-up Performance Management
• Holistic vs Incremental approaches to BI
• Pitching BI in difficult economic circumstances
• BI implementations are like icebergs
• BI and a different type of outsourcing
• Using BI to drive improvements in data quality
• Developing an international BI strategy
• The confluence of BI and change management
• “All that glisters is not gold” – some thoughts on dashboards
• Measuring the benefits of Business Intelligence
• Trends in Business Intelligence
• Is outsourcing business intelligence a good idea?
• A more appropriate metaphor for business intelligence projects
• The specific benefits of business intelligence in Insurance
• Tactical Meandering
• Business Analytics vs Business Intelligence
• A review of “The History of Business Intelligence” by Nic Smith
• A business intelligence parable
• The Apologists
• The Dictatorship of the Analysts
• The scope of IT’s responsibility when businesses go bad
• The importance of feasibility studies in business intelligence
• Business Intelligence Competency Centres
• Maureen Clarry stresses the need for change skills in business intelligence on BeyeNetwork
• Automating the business intelligence process?
• Using multiple business intelligence tools in an implementation – Part I
• Using multiple business intelligence tools in an implementation – Part II
• “Why Business Intelligence projects fail”
• Data – Information – Knowledge – Wisdom
• “Does Business Intelligence Require Intelligent Business?” by George M. Tomko
• Literary calculus?
• “Involving users in business intelligence strategy key for success” – Christina Torode on SearchCio-Midmarket.com
• A single version of the truth?
• Accuracy
• Is the time ripe for appointing a Chief Business Intelligence Officer?
• A bad workman blames his [Business Intelligence] tools
• Aphorism of the week
• Who should be accountable for data quality?
• Limitations of Business Intelligence
• Patterns patterns everywhere
• An informed decision
• Trouble at the top
• Using historical data to justify BI investments – Part I
• Using historical data to justify BI investments – Part II
• Using historical data to justify BI investments – Part III
• Analogies
• What should companies consider before investing in a Business Intelligence solution?
• Business Intelligence, a maturing industry?
• A Dictionary of the Business Intelligence Language
• Ten Million Aliens – More musings on BI-ology
• Forming an Information Strategy: Part I – General Strategy
• Forming an Information Strategy: Part II – Situational Analysis
• Forming an Information Strategy: Part III – Completing the Strategy
• The need for collaboration between teams using the same data in different ways
• Indiana Jones and The Anomalies of Data
• 20 Risks that Beset Data Programmes
• Predictions about Prediction
• Ideas for avoiding Big Data failures and for dealing with them if they happen
• The peterjamesthomas.com Data and Analytics Dictionary
• The impact of bad information on organisations
 
2. Cultural Transformation
A slight break from true chronological order here as the first three articles form a change-related trilogy.
• Marketing Change
• Education and cultural transformation
• Sustaining Cultural Change
The remaining articles are in the order of publication.
• Scaling-up Performance Management
• The confluence of BI and change management
• Perseverance
• Maureen Clarry stresses the need for change skills in business intelligence on BeyeNetwork
• Data – Information – Knowledge – Wisdom
• Bumps in the Road
• 20 Risks that Beset Data Programmes
• Ever tried? Ever failed?
 
3. IT / Business Alignment and IT Strategy
• Business is from Mars and IT is from Venus
• Scaling-up Performance Management
• Problems associated with the IT cycle
• Mitigating problems with the IT cycle
• Developing an international BI strategy
• “All that glisters is not gold” – some thoughts on dashboards
• Trends in Business Intelligence
• The specific benefits of business intelligence in Insurance
• Some thoughts on IT-Business Alignment from the Chase Zander IT Director Forum
• The latest and greatest versus the valuable
• The scope of IT’s responsibility when businesses go bad
• Two pictures paint a thousand words…
• Mountain Biking and Systems Integration
• “Involving users in business intelligence strategy key for success” – Christina Torode on SearchCio-Midmarket.com
• Is the time ripe for appointing a Chief Business Intelligence Officer?
• Business Sponsorship
• Forming an Information Strategy: Part I – General Strategy
• Forming an Information Strategy: Part II – Situational Analysis
• Forming an Information Strategy: Part III – Completing the Strategy
 
4. General Articles
Again a break from true chronological order here as the first three articles are all related to the Chase Zander IT Director Forum.
• The Top Business Issues facing CIOs / IT Directors
• The Top Business Issues facing CIOs / IT Directors – Results
• Some thoughts on IT-Business Alignment from the Chase Zander IT Director Forum
The remaining articles are in the order of publication.
• Vision vs Pragmatism
• Some reasons why IT projects fail
• Tactical Meandering
• Perseverance
• Pigeonholing – A tragedy
• My approach to Management
• Recipes for success?
• Synthesis
• Mountain Biking and Systems Integration
• Jargon
• A first for me…
• Accuracy
• Running before you can walk
• The Big Picture
• Presenting in public
• Patterns patterns everywhere
• Incremental Progress and Rock Climbing
• Analogies
• Toast
• 25 Indispensable Business Terms
• A Nobel Laureate’s views on creating Meaning from Data
 
5. Industry Commentary
This is a new category, created given the number of articles I have written recently about SAS and the Oracle / Sun Microsystems link-up.
Article Vendor(s) / Area
• Google mail problems Google
• Business Analytics vs Business Intelligence SAS
• A review of “The History of Business Intelligence” by Nic Smith Microsoft
• A business intelligence parable SAS
• The Apologists SAS
• The Dictatorship of the Analysts SAS
• Mergers and value Oracle,
Sun,
IBM
• Combinatorics Oracle,
Sun,
IBM,
Microsoft
• The Register’s take on Microsoft and Oracle / Sun Oracle,
Sun,
Microsoft
• “Why do CFOs and CEOs hate IT? – ERP” – Thomas Wailgum at CIO.com ERP
• More problems for Googlemail Google
• Automating the business intelligence process? Balanced Insight
• Using multiple business intelligence tools in an implementation Cognos
• The Cloud Circle Forum – London Microsoft
• Consider including… Google
• A William Tell moment? Microsoft
• The Great Divide – Worrying parallels between Windows 8 and the Xbox One Microsoft
• The Big Data Universe Big Data
• Do any technologies grow up or do they only come of age? Big Data
• Elephants’ Graveyard? Big Data
• Ideas for avoiding Big Data failures and for dealing with them if they happen Big Data
 
6. Social Media
The New Adventures in Wi-Fi series:
• Track 1: Blogging
• Track 2: Twitter
• Track 3: LinkedIn
The remaining articles are in the order of publication.
• A first for me…
• A question of Twitter etiquette
• A recording of me being interviewed by Brian Roger of SmartDataCollective.com
• Accuracy
• Inspiration
• Independent Analysts and Social Media – a marriage made in heaven
• How I write
• Four [Social Media] Failures and a Success
• LinkedIn does what it says on the can
• Wager
• LinkedIn does what it says on the can
• The Kindness of Strangers
• Solve if u r a genius
 
7. Data Visualisation & Infographics
• “All that glisters is not gold” – some thoughts on dashboards
• Data Visualisation – A Scientific Treatment
• Showing uncertainty in a Data Visualisation
• A Tale of Two [Brexit] Data Visualisations
• How Age was a Critical Factor in Brexit
• Metamorphosis
• Nucleosynthesis and Data Visualisation
• Hurricanes and Data Visualisation: Part I – Rainbow’s Gravity
• Hurricanes and Data Visualisation: Part I(b) – The Mona Lisa
 
8. Chief Data Officer
• Is the time ripe for appointing a Chief Business Intelligence Officer?
• Wanted – Chief Data Officer
• 5 Themes from a Chief Data Officer Forum
• 5 More Themes from a Chief Data Officer Forum
• Data Management as part of the Data to Action Journey
• Themes from a Chief Data Officer Forum – the 180 day perspective
• The Chief Data Officer “Sweet Spot”
• Alphabet Soup
• A Sweeter Spot for the CDO?
• A truth universally acknowledged…
 
9. Statistics & Modelling
• Patterns patterns everywhere
• Medical malpractice
• Using historical data to justify BI investments – Part III
• An Inconvenient Truth
• Curiouser and Curiouser – The Limits of Brexit Voting Analysis
• More Statistics and Medicine
• Toast
• How to be Surprisingly Popular
• Bigger and Better (Data)?
• Knowing what you do not Know
• A Nobel Laureate’s views on creating Meaning from Data
 
10. Interviews
• An in-depth Interview with Blockchain luminary Gary Nuttall
• An in-depth Interview with Allan Engelhardt about Analytics

 
I will attempt to keep this page up-to-date as I post new content.
 

26 thoughts on “Keynote Articles”

  15. […] Beyond the previous point, I would go further and say that it is crucial that you are truly passionate about at least one thing that you write about and ideally several. Expressing strong opinions is fine, assuming that you have some reason for holding them and that you remain open to the ideas of other people. For me, these areas of passion are Business Intelligence, its intimate connection with Cultural Transformation and the related area of IT / Business Alignment. […]

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  19. […] Keynote Articles « Peter Thomas – Award-winning Business Intelligence and Cultural Transformation Expert Geliştirici: bihelper Peter Thomas sonderece güzel bir akıs ve kronoloji ile yazılarını toplamıs. Sizden ote kendime hemen ulaşacak bir referans için blogladım Keynote Articles « Peter Thomas – Award-winning Business Intelligence and Cultural Transformation… […]

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  23. […] I have also introduced the alternative path from Data to Insight; the one that passes through Statistical Analysis. Data Management is equally critical to the success of this type of approach. I believe that the schematic suggests some of the fluidity that is a major part of effective Data Management in my experience. I also hope that the exhibit supports my assertion that Data Management is not an end in itself, but instead needs to be considered in terms of the outputs that it helps to generate. Pristine data is of little use to an organisation if it is not then exploited to form insights and drive actions. As ever, this need to drive action necessitates a focus on cultural transformation, an area that is covered in many other parts of this site. […]

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