stories

Beginner’s mind in IT

September 24, 2010 by Ted Cuzzillo

A young information technology worker in a large organization follows his common sense — and his boss scolds for it. The question is how to respond.

Back in 1980, he had just started at his first job, at the CBS Television Network. He soon noticed that every week business people asked him for the same data from the same source. So he did the logical thing: he wrote an algorithm for himself to save time.

Then he did the next logical thing: he gave the algorithm to the business people. They could do it themselves, and he didn’t have to do it for them.… Read the rest “Beginner’s mind in IT”

Two analysts’ paths

July 21, 2009 by Ted Cuzzillo

Yesterday I asked business analysts at the Tableau conference in Seattle about their work. Here are two quick sketches.

• One of the two arrived at her present employer six years ago to do the company’s first analysis of its website sales. She used several years of accumulated data to show which content was making money and which wasn’t. When she had organized the job into a routine, she handed it off to someone else and moved to the next question: What parts of the marketing was working? Again, she worked it into a routine and gave the task away. Next: what were visitors doing on the site?… Read the rest “Two analysts’ paths”

Also “not BI”

May 27, 2009 by Ted Cuzzillo

From a reader who identified with “That’s not BI“: His product has performed BI functions for many years, though it still goes unacknowledged except by users. “Sometimes the looking down the nose from the cognoscenti gets to you.”