Business Intelligence > Data Quality

Many companies are learning the consequence of poor data quality. Whether you deploy DQA tools or a business rules repository, the need to continuously ensure the high data quality has never been greater.

Data warehouse projects are, essentially, the biggie size IT project. Project structure, standards and organizational guidelines: these are all magnified when creating the foundation for a successful DW project environment. Don't fear, though, we'll walk you through the basics of a DW project and help eliminate questions and focus on building a successful project.

You can't put too much emphasis on data quality. Poor data quality can destroy your data warehouse at its very foundation.

In the ever-increasing speed trip down the ramp of badly made cost-cutting decisions, many mainstream manufacturers are compromising on the quality of their products. To help address this, we all need to more carefully monitor the quality of our supplier goods.

Understaffed and overwhelmed with "kitchen-sink" expectations, from daily ad hoc reports to high-level analysis, PMOs are failing to live up to their hyped potential. The answer for more organizations is blowing in the offshore wind, where globally distributed teams leverage the 24-hour-clock while working on production and administrative functions, freeing up onsite resources to focus on strategic needs.

Does your PPM solution help you understand the cost of IT operations or just your projects and portfolios? Technology Business Management is an emerging category of software solutions designed to help CIOs and IT executives manage and communicate the cost, quality and value of IT Services.

If you want to ensure that your organization can differentiate itself based on quality, you need to ensure that everyone is focused on achieving that goal. Quality goes far beyond the individual project, and this article looks at some of the steps needed to ensure that you are capable of delivering quality projects on a consistent basis.

You’ve created the WBS, estimated the effort and identified the resources. But your schedule is not complete — or realistic — unless it reflects the entire project plan, including cost, risk and quality. Schedule-centered planning can help. Sure, there is always pressure to commit to dates right now — just be sure they’re not delusions.

How many projects is your organization going to deliver next year? “As many as we can” is not a helpful or meaningful answer. In lieu of an established portfolio planning process, there are some techniques that can help a company calculate the number of projects and programs it can realistically handle in the coming year.

An effective contingent work team can be procured more easily when you get involved in development of the SOW. Your non-involvement may result in a costly Emergency Executive Intervention.

When unforeseen problems occur on a project, the rush to resolve them often ignores their underlying causes, and the same issues reoccur, sometimes worse. Project leaders should include root cause analysis in their corrective actions, but there are challenges to consider. Here is guidance, including a 10-step problem-solving model.

Sometimes tearing something down and starting all over from the ground up is the right thing to do. Sometimes it isn't. There is much to be learned and used from previous data warehouse projects.

Project management has its roots in technical environments and appears to be returning to those roots after years of being a haven for generalists. But does this trend short-change PM experience and resourcefulness? Is technical expertise really required?

A well-functioning Scrum project requires three distinct roles, separate but equal: the Product Owner oversees what is being delivered on behalf of the customer; the Scrum team controls how they work; and the Scrum Master facilitates and acts as keeper of the process on behalf of the organization.

Taking responsibility is the biggest roadblock to dealing with data quality.

You've muddled through the selection, structure, standards and organization steps of your DW project--now what? It's time to execute. Get the tools you need to work through the daily DW grind. Use them correctly, and you can avoid or resolve common problems.

“Cloud” sounds kind of ethereal, doesn’t it? Lofty in some ways, yet soft and comforting like a bed of heaven. With this new system direction, we’re supposed to let our concerns just float away. Not so fast...

Government contractor Johnston McLamb shares details about the benefits of pursuing process improvement via a more rigorous CMMI rating. Such a trend is spreading among smaller IT firms worldwide, according to CMMI program manager Mike Phillips.

When you are in charge of an internet project or about to launch an internet initiative, there are three principles you should know about to help you deliver internet applications on time and within budget.

Looking for the path to BI enlightenment? Here's a start.

Discussion on quality management has not evolved much since the mid-1990s. Within executive circles, the discussions are not about the importance of quality, but rather on what quality is, how it is achieved and how it can be measured. The issues surrounding quality seem focused on definition and approach rather than on need. What is quality? What does senior management expect from the quality process, and how do these expectations apply to IT? Read on...

Since service management is far more important to our customers than information technology, the acronym should be SMIT--or Service Management through Information Technology--rather than ITSM. There are many methods for structuring the improvement of the service that we provide to our customers, but all of the complexity boils down to a few important considerations.

During the last few decades, many quality management programs have delivered real benefits to many organizations across the world in a number of areas including cost control, process improvement, customer retention and product development. That is why organizations have embraced the concept of quality management as a key business enabler and a critical success factor.

An IT transformation program at Allianz sought simpler creation and review of project information to let stakeholders resolve project issues more quickly, with more timely and detailed data. Allianz implemented BrightWork's pmPoint solution, leveraging its use of Microsoft Project and SharePoint.

What is the business value of agile project management for creating new products and services? What are the costs and benefits--or what is the ROI of agile project management? Has anyone ever measured the benefits? If so, what are the results? Furthermore, is there a measurable difference between agile and traditional project management? Some studies shed light on these crucial questions.

Using product quality to deliver business value in agile development is vital. This article provides a how-to for progressive change agents interested in delivering products that generate measurable business value for their customers and stakeholders. You’ll learn how product qualities differ from functions, how to identify the right ones, measure them and use improvements to drive business results.

While the Lean Six Sigma approach is rarely linked with business intelligence, it is a concept that relies heavily on data, measures and analysis to support and encourage process improvement efforts. These can be provided by the BI function in the organization. The two disciplines can work together in a symbiotic relationship--one requiring data to solve problems, the other requiring problems for the data it can provide.

Quality is a nebulous term that is often misunderstood and misrepresented. In this series of articles, our writer presents a three-stage quality management process of quality planning, quality assurance and quality control using a simple example of purchasing a submarine sandwich (hold the pickles, please!).

We know, we know...you just want to sit down and eat. But before you do, we have one last lesson from The Sub Shop. How does it know that it's producing a product that meets your requirements? Is the sandwich being produced a quality sandwich? Is your experience a positive one? We can examine this through the quality control step in our quality management process.

A real commitment to operating a business and performing projects in an environmentally conscious and responsible way is a commitment to quality standards that minimize CO2 emissions and promote sustainability. To realize the full benefits of turning green, an enterprise must take a disciplined and systematic approach to implementing green standards.

It is absolutely critical that IT management use the project resource budget properly to put the right resources in the right roles. Read on for help in using the budget to best staff your team.

How to explain the value proposition of information management in non-geeky terms to business people.

Quality is hard to build and maintain, and very easy to destroy. Here we look at some of the areas where those bad decisions are commonly made--and see if there's help in navigating through the minefield.

Establishing strategies with a sponsored project management office dedicated to overseeing their implementation within an organization can generate a stronger, more refined and professional business environment that is reliable and dependable--and thus more attractive to customers.

Testing is not the same as quality, and it’s not a replacement for it either. Our writer hopes to help you identify some ways that you can improve how you manage quality on your own projects--and hammer home that if you plan for quality in the first place, you won’t need to spend so much time fixing the things that have gone wrong.

Still hungry? As our mouth-watering series on quality management continues, quality assurance takes center stage. While the concepts are often not well defined and are made more complicated than they need to be, a trip to the sub shop may hold the answers.