Project Management and Big Data – as a project

Post written by Jason Z., Project Manager at Ideaca. Read more about project management on his blog: Unnatural Leadership.

As part of this month’s Ideaca blogging network challenge, we were tasked with discussing our thoughts on Big Data.

This is going to be a 2 part post:

• The first part will cover how you, as a project manager, should approach a project that carries the mantle of “Big Data.”
• The second part will cover how you, as someone in a Project/Program Management Office, can use Big Data without getting snookered by the hype.

Part 1 – So you’ve been asked to “implement Big Data”… what now?

Defining Your Terms
I am going to assume that you – like me – tend to be baffled by the marketing speak until you can speak with someone intelligently about a topic. In the case of Big Data, I have heard a few definitions. The one that seems to stick the most for me is the one from Wikipedia:

• Data sets that are too big for traditional database management systems to handle
• Data sets that comprise information from multiple sources to try to infer correlation

Sounds easy enough, right?
Where it starts to get complicated (thanks Wade!) is when you try to integrate “unstructured and semi-structured data with our 'traditional' structured data.”

You will never “implement Big Data”
When it comes to Big Data, you do not implement it. You may be implementing a technology to support the analysis, but you will never actually implement this “thing.” A project of this sort relies on understanding the user requirements, selecting the right technology, and taking an exploratory approach when developing reporting capabilities.

Understanding the User Requirements
In the case of a new process and technology, such as this, your user requirements may be fairly light. "We want to correlate information from disparate sources to identify predictive trends” or “I don’t know – but I really want some cool looking reports” may be common lines that you hear. Like all projects, the user requirements are your definition of success. Because “Big Data” is still a technology in the exploratory stage, though, expecting detailed requirements may be the wrong sorts of requirements. The ones that you should be really focused on are the data sources and ensuring that the information being presented is right.

To wit, if I were to ask you to present the information on the average CEO compensation for the top 50 companies in North America, how would you start? How would you define the Top 50?  By Market Capitalization? By Environmental Performance? By Stock Price? By Revenue? What about getting access to private company information? All of the sudden, a fairly simple question about the average CEO compensation gets a little more complex.

The same will be true of your Big Data project. Start by understanding that to present the information your users want, you will either have to ask a whole lot of detailed questions, or provide a platform to enable them to answer their own questions.

Understanding the available technology
As Project Managers, we know that when we are asked to Implement something, it’s never that simple. Understanding what the technology can and cannot do is critical to ensuring that your project can meet the user’s definition of success.

One might want to satisfy the guiding principles of a company’s Enterprise Architecture. A quick scan of the landscape will reveal that tools like SAP HANA, Oracle’s Exadata, and Amazon’s AWS can all fulfill the technology requirements quite nicely and potentially support a company’s Enterprise Architecture. However, since this is a new application of technology, fulfillment of requirements needs to trump Enterprise Architecture.

Take an Exploratory and Iterative Approach to reporting
Some organizations will judge success of your project by its ability to deliver a load of reports. If this sounds like your organization, be realistic as to what can be delivered. Deliver a robust and reliable dataset, some transactional reports, and one report that really helps demonstrate the art of the possible.

Smarter organizations will judge the success of your project by its ability to deliver analytic capabilities to the user base. The robust and reliable dataset is still mandatory, but the ability for users to generate their own reports will satisfy all of the “what about …?” requirements that would blow your project budget and schedule out of the water.

In the end… it’s the people that matter
If we believe all of the marketing hype, Big Data will help us explore all the myriad of ways our world is constructed. But from the perspective of a Big Data as a project, an empowered user base will produce much more value than some canned reports.

Have you been asked to “implement big data”?
If so, what did your project look like? Let me know in the comments down below. Stay tuned for another post on making the most of Big Data in a PMO.


Special thanks to Wade Walker and Chris Sorensen for keeping me honest with this post.

The Art of Retail

The Art of Retail event was held on April 17, 2013 at Archeo in Toronto’s Distillery District. This event brought together executives from large Canadian retailers, including Canadian Tire and Shoppers Drug Mart, to educate on how to optimize mobile, social and web technology while growing their businesses. 

Two experienced and prominent speakers offered their insights into the ever-changing world of retail. The first of these speakers was Doug Stephens, a retail expert, founder and President of Retail Prophet, and author of The Retail Revival. Stephens educated attendees on how demographic and technological changes are affecting customer bases, how companies can stay current and how new technologies are transforming how we shop. He also shared his belief in a coming retail revival that is only possible if retailers embrace technology.

The second speaker, Scott Stratten, focused his presentation on the social aspect of retail. Stratten is the President of Un-Marketing and author of the book UnMarketing: Stop Marketing. Start Engaging.. Stratten is also an expert in Viral, Social, and his own style of Authentic Marketing: Un-Marketing. His presentation covered topics such as why people spread some business content and not others, what fractional reaction means, what tools are useful and what are fads, how to improve corporate social media, and how to transform a negative situation into a positive situation. Stratten told attendees that passionate and knowledgeable frontline employees play a larger role in selling than the logos found on the product itself. He also stressed the importance of social media and creating a product that people want to talk about online. 

In addition to the presentations by Stephens and Stratten, Michael Griffiths, Global Managing Director of Retail at Microsoft led a customer panel featuring Longo’s, Microsoft Store, and Ideaca’s longtime client, LS travel retail North America. The three retailers discussed their ongoing journey to become connected through the implementation of fully-integrated Microsoft retail solutions. They shared their experiences with the audience including, what brought the need for them to adopt a connected and agile solution, lessons learned during the implementation and the improvements in their retail operations since go-live.

Positive feedback from the almost 100 attendees confirmed the success of this event. Thanks to Microsoft Dynamics for their partnership in The Art of Retail! For other upcoming Ideaca events visit http://www.ideaca.com/news.