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Mastery Journey Reflection: Business Intelligence Technologies

When I projected what I thought I should learn and what I wanted to learn from this class, I was significantly underprepared to make such assumptions. I had intended to learn what OLAP and OLTP are, and their differences. In reality, the basic definitions and differences between OLAP and OLTP were woefully inadequate learning goals for this class.

OLAP and OLTP are just pieces of functionality, performed by Business Intelligence technologies, so I learned significantly more than I intended in this class. Having said this, the class was extremely heavy on the technology as applications side of the house. This was important because it forced me to acknowledge processes beyond basic OLAP and OLTP, such as ETL and Data Visualization. The research gave me a significant understanding of how BI applications function and how they fit within the enterprise technology infrastructure.

Moving forward, I’ll be able to take the information I gained on the way data flows through enterprise, the way it’s governed and the way BI applications interact with it, to find a solution for business problems.

Mastery Journey Reflection: Foundations of Business Intelligence

To be succinct, I will first acknowledge the complete failure, to accomplish any of the tasks I set for myself on my Mastery Journal Timeline. I misunderstood the depth to which our text would take us in researching the field itself, so what I spent my time studying was more beneficial than it would have been for me to create databases and outline specific processes. I didn’t know, what I didn’t know. What I realized is that what I planned to build, would not be better than the other solutions on the market. Which means building out a database would have been a pointless endeavour. Instead, I was able to study what’s on the market and once I find something I can do better, I’ll be able to apply myself to the fruitful endeavor of exploiting it, rather than wasting my own time building a solution for a problem that doesn’t exist.

Without the intent of being cliche, I have learned the foundations of Business Intelligence. Overall, I learned CRISP-DM, the 4 BI Capabilities, vendors who provide BI tools, what those tools are, and the methods (Agile, Waterfall) used to develop BI solutions, as well as several types of analysis e.g., Pestel, SWOT. There was much more information covered, but this is a good summary. In addition to learning about BI specifically, we learned the various use cases for and how to implement Microsoft Visio 2016.

I think it’s a question of how I will apply what I’ve learned in Foundations of Business Intelligence, rather than how I might. Throughout this program we will have to build out custom solutions and how better to plan them, than with diagrams. Also each of the things I learned directly defines some capacity of a BI solution, or how to build it, which will come in handy as we build our own BI solutions for our Capstone.

Those who achieve great things are the ones willing to be scared but not scared off

Richard Branson

Mastery Timeline

Screenshot of my Feedly profile for class.

Mastery Journal Logo

Screenshot of my LinkedIn for class. (MDL501-O 03)

Screenshot of my Papaly account for class. (MDL501-O 03)

Papaly is a simple social bookmarking tool to manage all your links. Create custom boards and categories. Share and follow topics of interest to discover new content.

So, if you're planning to do something with your life, if you have a 10 year plan of how to get there, you should ask: why can't you do this in 6 months?

Feriss, T. (2016). Tools of titans (p. 233). N.p.: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Everyone is interesting. If you’re ever bored in a conversation, the problem’s with you, not the other person.

Matt Mullenweg, Tools for Titans, 202

#timferriss #toolsfortitans #conversation #mattmullenweg

You can spend, as a leader, 15 hours a day and 7 days a week trying to control people or you can spend a few hours a day trying to inspire people.

Doug Burgum

#business entrepreneur #finance #accounting #software #development

Wealth gotten by vanity shall be diminished: but he that gathereth by labour shall increase

Proverbs 13:11

My statement of intent

My intent, for my Mastery Journey over the next twelve months, is to build a solid foundation around and a firm understanding of, Business Intelligence. My goal beyond the next 12 months, is to master the domain where business and technology meet. To build a software company that provides full-spectrum business solutions. To get a relative idea of what I mean, think somewhere along the lines of what Microsoft, Intuit, & SAP are offering, for scope.

Pertaining to BI (Business Intelligence), and more specifically this graduate program, I have a couple of goals. From what I can discern, BI demands you have foundational knowledge of four areas. Finance/Accounting, Databases, Statistics, & Data Visualization. If you think of BI as a thing, wrapped into SaaS (Software as a Service) or a PaaS (Platform as a Service), we need to add one more area, programming. In my use-case scenario, it’s more specifically, web programming. I know a fair amount about each of these, but I also know there is a vast wealth of knowledge I have yet to uncover.

As far as I can tell, the degree tackles these subjects in rapid succession, sans programming. I intend to take it at face value and invest myself and my time in researching and completing the coursework for each of the months topics. I will note I have a childish curiosity, so deep research each month, is implied. My personal and professional time out side of academics is a ripe opportunity to gain more experience in each of the areas I mentioned above and I’m currently planning my strategy. More specifically, I’m trying to decide if I’m going to work freelance, so I can be home more, to have more control over my schedule and focusing it on starting up my company, or getting a finance/accounting focused development job. I would like to note, it would be a wonderful time to have a mentor to bounce these questions and ideas off, so I’ll add that as a goal to my Mastery journey over the next 12 months, finding a mentor or two.

To state a few clear, definitive goals for the next twelve months summarily, I would like to master the core functions of Business Intelligence, understand who the biggest players are in the BI software arena and why, and leave this degree primed to immediately begin development on my first cloud based, business focused, Software as a Service. Oh yeah, I would like to not forget to pick up a few mentors too!

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