DAMA - Philadelphia / Delaware Valley Chapter

Serving the greater Philadelphia area, southern New Jersey, and the State of Delaware

Program Schedule

Wednesday, May 11th, 2005 - Towers Perrin

We hope you joined DAMA Philadelphia/Delaware Valley to hear 

Tom Haughey

President, InfoModel, LLC

Dimensional Modeling

Click on a Title to see the presentation

Together with 

Trine Bech

Program Director for System Reform in Philadelphia’s Division of Social Services

Practical Performance Measurement

And our very own

Paul Gundersen

President, FirstQuarter, Inc

Justifying Business Intelligence and BI Best Practices

Refreshments Sponsored By

Tom Haughey is currently President of InfoModel LLC, a training and consulting company. His courses on data management, data warehousing, and software development have been delivered to Fortune 1000 companies around the world. He is considered one of the founders of information engineering in the US . He has worked on the development of seven different CASE tools. He was formerly CTO for the Pepsi Bottling Group and Director of Enterprise Data Warehousing for Pepsico. He worked for IBM for 17 years as a Senior project manager. He is the author of many articles on Data Management and Data Warehousing and has worked on a multitude of data management projects.

Dimensional Modeling

This presentation focuses on the specialized techniques and terminologies used in modeling informational data. It provides concrete guidelines and rules for modeling such data as is typical of data warehouses and data marts. The presentation also emphasizes what is different about informational data. It stresses that modeling informational data is not just an intuitive process based solely on the spontaneous judgment of a skilled analyst. It can be based on sound rules and guidelines just as operational data models are. The presentation will not represent any particular theoretical camp for warehouse modeling. Rather, it will present the different alternatives and the pros and serious cons of each. In fact, it will ask an important question: “Is there any such thing as dimensional modeling?” One overall goal of this presentation is to dispel the notion that there is one and only one way to model analytical data, and to refute the misconception that the decision as to how the data should look can be decided in advance.

The presentation will also cover the major concepts and terms used in dimensional modeling. It will emphasize five fundamental concepts:

1.       Understanding that the major difference in dimensional modeling is the data and its unique characteristics;

2.       Finding the right level of granularity in the warehouse and data marts is critical;

3.       That the data warehouse is not a database but an integrated environment consisting of different levels of data;

4.       That even dimensional modeling must be based on data modeling principles; and

Trine Bech  is the Program Director for System Reform for the City of Philadelphia where she assists the Director of Social Services to implement a social service reform agenda to improve outcomes for the citizens of Philadelphia. A lawyer by training, she has spent most of her professional life working to reform legal, and public child and family service systems.  Her prior experience includes:  Deputy and Acting Director for the State of Delaware’s Department of Services for Children, Youth and their Families; Director of the Court’s and Communities Initiative, a joint venture between the Vermont Supreme Court and the Vermont Agency of Human Services, which included Vermont’s Court Improvement project; Consultant to the Director of the Rhode Island Department of Children, Youth and Families; an Annie E. Casey Foundation Fellow, a national leadership program aimed to improve the lives of disadvantaged children and families; a Vermont Family Court Magistrate, and a lawyer in private practice.  She obtained her B.A. degree from Mills College , and her J.D. from Vermont  Law School.

 Practical Performance Management - Measuring Results, Not Activity.

Much of the confusion about performance measurement derives from the attempt to impose industrial-model concepts on change-agent services.  In truth, not all performance measures are created equally.

Many performance measurement documents provide a great deal of information on quantity about input, but very little on quality and output. Performance measures tend to deal exclusively with how many clients were served, how many applications were processed, etc. In some cases, these systems put forward even less appropriate industrial-model quantity measures, such as "how many workers do we have, how much space, how much money, etc.," not how much was produced, and how well.

The presentation focuses on a Four-Quadrant approach to performance measurement that allows us to cut down the performance measurement conundrum to its bare essentials.  The heart of any performance measurement system is the way in which data are categorized, selected, and used. All work on performance measurement tries to answer two sets of interlocking questions:

The presentation also provides the framework of what to do with the performance measures once you have them and provides seven questions for managers and their teams (public and private sectors alike) to get to an action plan for improving performance.

Paul Gunderson has held numerous technology leadership positions throughout the past 20 years. He recently launched FirstQuarter, Inc., an organization focused on helping clients improve net income through the effective use of business planning and business intelligence technologies. FirstQuarter’s goal is to help clients realize direct improvements to net income and operationally through the use of business intelligent and business planning technologies. The organization works with key members of client organizations to increase the credibility and flow of information used for reporting and decision-making. Much of Paul’s career has centered on delivering information to organizations worldwide in the financial, sales, human resource, and purchasing functions across a broad range of market sectors. He has served in technology management and technology leadership roles at companies such as DuPont, Microsoft, and Cognos. Paul also served as Vice President of Corporate Services for Right Management Consultants and Chief Information Officer for Strategic Distribution during significant growth periods in each organization.

Justifying Business Intelligence and BI Best Practices

The presentation addresses two fundamental questions that many organizations face. How do organizations that are losing money and/or have “no budget for new technology initiatives” justify the expense of new informational reporting initiatives?  What are the most pressing issues in Finance, Sales, Purchasing, and Human Resources functions on which we can use technology as a lever to improve operational effectiveness?

A small investment in business intelligent technologies can have huge leverage; however, gaining the momentum internally on new, and perhaps unbudgeted initiatives mid-year, is more art than science. The key to justifying project expense and improving operational effectiveness lies in addressing how technology can facilitate: freeing workers for analysis, helping recover precious cycle time, placing more cash on the balance sheet, and managing the human asset.

This presentation provides case studies of clients who have recognized clear financial gains or operational improvements from implementing business intelligence. The presentation also provides a family of best practices business intelligence that serve as “launch point” templates used across a wide range of industries.