Big Data is certainly a hot topic, and it can provide some great benefits. It’s becoming increasingly available to business users with some of the features in SharePoint 2013, as an article from TechRepublic reports. But it’s also important to remember “little data” in this discussion.
Little data can help inform decision-making on the front lines and in project teams. For example, when activities, tasks, budgets and time are tracked using spreadsheets. Making use of this data to communicate trend information and the health of the project, but without the requirement of a formal database under the hood to crunch the numbers, is possible with tools like PowerPivot, Excel services and Power BI, available soon in Office 365.
The critical issue is being able to glean insights — time series trends, period comparisons and so on — and communicate that to a broader audience so that timely decisions can be made. There’s real data sitting in those spreadsheets, and with the tools available now, business users are better able to discover and communicate what that data means.
The business intelligence available in these tools has, in some sense, been available since the introduction of SQL Server 2005. However, tapping into it required some serious technical expertise, usually in the form of heavy support from IT, the TechRepublic article explains. Tools that nontechnical users can take advantage of are more likely to be used to help make the right decisions quickly. That’s important, because rapid response and intervention now overshadows strategic advantage as a company’s most valuable strength, the article notes.
Entirely too much emphasis has been placed on simply tracking and reporting, and not enough on analyzing data and looking for real insights. Enabling users to publish and visualize the data in meaningful ways forces them to think about what questions they’re trying to answer and what decisions need to be made and when. Putting data analysis in the hands of decision-makers and stakeholders, rather than in a system that relies on IT, can also improve collaboration and productivity.
In addition, a greater focus on analysis rather than just data gathering forces users to get to the root cause of issues and ask why. For instance, why has the project burn rate exceeded the plan for three consecutive months? It also forces the discipline of looking for causation versus correlation. Once causal factors are understood, they can start to be tracked so that you begin to develop leading indicator data points that help anticipate problems and allow for corrective measures.
Source: TechRepublic, October 2013
