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The Dow of BI

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I don’t mind long lines at trade show buffets. All else being equal, the length roughly equals attendance, which roughly indicates industry fizz. For an indicator, though, the analytics/business intelligence industry can do better than that.

How do we take the pulse? What if those who promote the technology, advise the clients, and build the systems actually measured their collective progress with a number? It would be an ongoing, forever-updating, simple benchmark. It would be the industry’s Dow Jones Industrial Average.

Four or five years ago, when the industry seemed simpler, I envisioned a number like this. Why not?

First hurdle: the lack of complete public data. We have it for a few vendors, such as IBM and Oracle, but not for the industry’s many startups. For example, how does Tableau’s ascent figure in, and how do we measure it?

Could we count the number of BI-related hash tags in Twitter? Maybe, but what does the number indicate? Is it success or marketing people out of work? Tweets from Tableau, for example, have been way down for six months or more. Here, down means up. They must have something cooking.

Slightly more credible than buffet lines are the annual surveys by industry analysts. Business intelligence as a priority is up — or was it down? — this year from last, they say. But what did survey respondents mean by “business intelligence”?

Traditional deciders say “BI” to signify plumbing — metaphorically, the path from groundwater to kitchen sink. Did you ever see a plumber’s dream house? He’s installed no drywall; he wants the pipes exposed to admire the workmanship and efficiency: No leaks, good flow. Cooking, bathing, and washing the cat all come later if there’s time.

The non-plumbers make use of the water. The “kitchen sink” is where all that nice, clean data pays off. So the ideal point of measurement would be where data-based evidence reaches decision makers’ minds — say, just before it commingles with the tarot cards.

At that point, how strong is the influence of data analysis? How good is the analysis? How good and complete is the data?

If we could find a proxy for that pulse, we just might have found the Dow of BI.

I’ll ask around among industry mavens, especially the the cooks.

You know it when they dance

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Here’s that eternal question again: how do you know when whatever you’re working on is good enough? Today, two perspectives.

The Oscar-winning sound designer Walter Murch, speaking Friday night at the Rafael Film Center in San Rafael California, told about talking shop with Michael Jackson’s engineers. They told Murch that they had no special insight, they just tried one mix after another as Jackson sat in the back, silent. They knew they had it right when he got up and danced.

The other way was the General Motors way. They took forever, and sometimes simply stopped trying when the bureaucracy’s deadline came. A recent New York Times article explains why GM cars never made anyone want to dance, or at least not me.

“We measured ourselves ten ways from Sunday … But as soon as everything is important, nothing is important.” [director of G.M.’s vehicle engineers]

Decisions were made, if at all, at a glacial pace, bogged down by endless committees, reports and reviews that astonished members of President Obama’s auto task force.

In the old G.M., any changes to a product program would be reviewed by as many as 70 executives, often taking two months for a decision to wind its way through regional forums, then to a global committee, and finally to the all-powerful automotive products board.

Nobody lives forever, but make sure you dance while you can.