Notes on data, AI, IT
and security
No marketing fog. The way I think about real problems with founders and managers.
ETL as a production line: where queues, stoppages, and grey operations appear
Translating data integration into the language of manufacturing - so a manager can see bottlenecks in process logic, not in code.
Self-service BI: how not to turn reporting freedom into a contradiction factory
Self-service analytics only works with a shared metrics vocabulary and data trust - otherwise every department arrives at the meeting with its own version of the truth.
NoSQL without the hype: what it solves and what it only complicates
A framework for choosing NoSQL through three real dimensions: consistency, load, and cost of maintenance.
MDM versus the ERP zoo and local spreadsheets
Why most BI project failures are actually master data failures - not analytics failures and not tool failures.
Data quality before analytics: why dirty master data breaks any BI
Dashboards and BI tools produce answers that are exactly as good as the data underneath them. Until reference data and master records are in order, visualisation only makes the disorder look convincing.
Hadoop in business terms: when a cluster makes sense and when a DWH is enough
Hadoop does not replace a data warehouse and is not the answer to every large-volume question. A breakdown of which tasks justify a cluster and which ones do not.
Big data without the magic: where to start when you have a lot of data and little value
Why inventorying your sources and metrics matters more than buying a platform, and how to get to actual value from data.