Essential Big Data Skills

Patti Gilchrist, PMP, is a Senior Technical Manager with more than 20 years of IT experience. Visit her website at www.freepmstudy.com

  Business Intelligence   Strategy  

As a project manager, have you been asked to lead a mission-critical big data project for your organization? Or maybe you need to hire someone to manage an upcoming effort? To help you prepare, the following is a list of some of the essentials skills required to successfully manage a big data project.

Let’s start with skills that project managers most likely already possess.

Cross-functional team management experience
Many project managers already have this core skill since most projects typically involve managing cross-functional teams. Project managers will need to utilize this core skill set for big data projects to manage expanded teams that include a diverse group of professionals, including engineering disciplines, scientists, business analysts, business “super” users, operations, etc.

Success requires a blend of talent. According to Rich Katz, CTO of Elemica, you should not assemble a team consisting primarily of IT experts. “Creating cross-functional team including operations, engineers, technology, sales, logistics, finance, etc. is instrumental in tying analytical efforts back to specific business objectives.”

Ability to identify tasks and generate an action plan
So what project manager doesn’t already know how to do this? Project managers are adept at this, so they can apply their expertise to big data …

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