Keynote Address: Alec Sharp, Clariteq Systems Consulting
The Multi-Skilled Influencer – Getting Out of the Data Box to Achieve Data Management Goals
Sometimes, to hit the target, you have to aim slightly away from it. And sometimes, to achieve a goal, you have to aim for a completely different one. That’s how it is with Enterprise Data Management – in many cases, success has come from contributing to other initiatives. The catch? This requires skills not usually associated with pure data management, plus a measure of trust and opportunism. We’ll look at many of these, backed up by real-life examples, with a focus on three in particular. In addition to showing how data management goals have been supported by applying these techniques, we’ll provide some useful tips and frameworks for each of them:
- Business Process Change: Business processes work on “things” (a Part, a Product, an Issue, etc.) which typically move through the process as data; we’ll look at techniques to make the “data” perspective valuable.
- Application Requirements: Use Cases and User Stories are well known techniques that many Business Analysts struggle with; we’ll look at an entity-based approach that overcomes some of the usual difficulties, especially in Agile settings.
- Facilitation: Questions that are standard practice for facilitators (“What do you mean by…”) can surface familiar data management issues of consistency and communication, particularly with senior management teams.
About Alec Sharp:
With 35 years of consulting experience, Alec has provided hands-on data modelling and data management expertise throughout North America, Asia, Europe, and Australasia – his presentations are based on real-world experience, not textbook theory. Alec has also delivered hundreds of Data Modelling and Advanced Data Modelling workshops, and top-rated presentations at international conferences, including “The Seven Deadly Sins of Data Modelling,” “Data Modelling – New Uses for New Times,” “The Lost Art of Conceptual Modelling,” and “Getting Traction for Data Modelling – Winning Over the Masses.” Alec is the author of “Workflow Modelling, Second Edition” (Artech House, 2009) which is a consistent best-seller in the field, and is widely used as an MBA text and consulting guide. At Enterprise Data World 2010, Alec was awarded DAMA’s 2010 Professional Achievement Award, a global award given to one professional a year for contributions to the Data Management profession.