Pet peeves related to Strategy, leadership, information architecture and management, and coaching
This weekend I read a piece on the Information Management website by Steve Miller with the title of Big Data vs. the Data Warehouse. It’s an old piece, from March 2014.
It was in response to a piece by Bill Inmon titled “Big Data or Data Warehouse?” Turbocharge Your Porsche – Buy an Elephant, in which he singled out for criticism the ad campaign of a big-data and Hadoop promoter.
Martyn Richard Jones
2026 Remaster
The problem with Data Warehousing is that at a superficially high level, it is very easy to explain, and it’s quite impressive that this superficially high level is all that a lot of people need in order to do data warehousing their own way.
Martyn Richard Jones
I wrote a piece titled “Mugged in Data Hell.”
It told the story of a CIO who was hoodwinked, cajoled, bullied, bribed and patronised into doing the wrong things, continuously.
As my mate Bill said, “It packs big punches, and doesn’t hold back with the shit-kicking truth”.
Written by Martyn Richard Jones
Remastered for 2026
’m in a board room, addressing the assembled bunch of socially challenged IT management and hangers-on.
I explain, in simple language, how they can and should implement Enterprise Data Warehousing iteratively and agilely, and why they should do so rather than other approaches. I also explain how to do Business Intelligence, again, both iteratively and agilely.
They, the assembled suits, wring their hands and say, “We can’t do it any differently now, we have to deliver everything we promised by September, or we are screwed”.
By Martyn Richard Jones
Continued from Part 3, which can be found here -> Part 3
“The following week, the full high-powered delegation from The Taffia Connection and BogartSys flies in. It was as if an army had come to do battle with us. Uniformly slick, sullen and tacky. iPhone; laptop; knock-off Marks and Spark’s; check patterns; butt ugly ties; ‘plastique’ shoes; mismatching socks; ‘business’ rucksacks; all weather hoodies; and, worst of all, off-the-peg smirks just begging to be slapped”.
Written by Martyn Richard Jones
These are my principles for successful Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence. If you don’t like them, I have others. Musings on being led by the nose by experienced practitioners of charlatanry, deception and obfuscation.
One of the most soul-destroying moments in the life of a data warehouse professional is when a key decision maker (usually backed by other key decision makers) decides to radically alter course, and “in a dance as old as time”, snatches defeat from the jaws of victory.
This can happen in various ways, but the most gut-wrenching of all is this…
You may well have seen all the climate change events around the world. 23rd September saw the biggest ever Climate Change awareness march the world has produced to date. Al Gore was there, Ban Ki Moon was there, Leonardo DiCaprio was there… even Prince Chuck was there.
In a city centre office block, somewhere in Scotland, the conversation between the IT Business Manager (Bill) and the Information Management Manager (Richie) is in full swing,, Bob is irate because his successfully delivered data mart has been derided as unusable rubbish by the business people it was meant to serve.
Let’s join the conversation: (more…)
Simple question, why do I write this blog? To enlighten? To inform? To help? To save mother earth?
Well, no, of course not.