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I initially thought the program would teach more hard skills related to BI. However, after learning more about what BI is and requires, I realized that it is not possible to cover everything or specific things, due to the number of options available within BI.

As a result, I was able to explore the necessary components of BI that introduced and broke down areas that will help me on my journey, concluding the program. Additionally, because of the program, I now know what direction I would like to take my career.

The Mastery: Personal Development and Leadership course prepared my mind to embark on the journey to grow as an individual, personally and professionally. The impact that Robert Greene’s Mastery book had on me, made me purchase the book to read and share with others.

Through the Foundations of Business Intelligence (FBI) course, I learned about the capabilities of tools and techniques and understanding the implementation and use of business intelligence.

In the Enterprise Data Management (EDM) course, I was able to attain the skills to build an EDM plan. The Visio skills learned in the FBI course were used to assist me in creating the EDM plan.

Business Intelligence Technologies (BIT) taught me the differences between BI technologies and solutions. Through this course, I explored vendors and their offerings. We explored case studies and the use of Gartner reports and research to identify technologies and solutions. We also created a SWOT analysis, which was later used throughout the program.

I begin learning and applying statistical operations, in the Business Intelligence Analytics (BIA) course. Though I was able to achieve a real good grade in this course, I realized this is an area that I would need further development in with respect to understanding and applying the necessary operations for forecasting and predicting to make effective business decisions. To obtain a job as a BI Analyst, I must continue to grow my statistical skills. To achieve this I have purchased a statistics book and I have created a playlist of statistics trainings, through Lynda.com.

The Data Mining course builds on what was learned through BIA. I learned about the major data mining processes and the technology available and its market challenges. Patterns can be recognized through the use of data mining processes and technologies.

Patterns and Recognition introduced me to social analytics, Bayes’ Theorem and Bollinger bands. This was helpful in learning about stock, my own business operations and processes and the impact of social media.

The Process Modeling and Analysis course was the most difficult course for me. Through this course we explored modeling types through our working company. This was presented through Wix.com, where I created a website of my personal clothing company (ABO). Lynda.com’s Business Analysis Foundations: Business Process Modeling course will aid me in filling in some fundamental gaps that I experienced during the course, and how I can apply what is learned.

The Data Visualization and Creative Reporting course was one of the more fun courses. This allowed me to demonstrate my visual creativity, introduced me to infographics and learn about presentation etiquettes and preferences. What was learned in this course will be utilized in my personal endeavors, as well as my professional responsibilities.

Through the Business Intelligence Leadership and Communication Skills course, I explored working scenarios that demonstrated different perspectives of communication and leadership. This course revisited topics discussed in the Mastery course. I was able to develop a plan to increase my leadership and communication skills.

The Business Intelligence Case Studies (ICS) course applied everything we learned through the month two through month nine courses, as well as the first two weeks of the ICS course. In weeks three and four, I worked on my data-informed solution plan for my client company. This was solution plan was used to complete the final version of the capstone project for weeks one and two of the Business Intelligence Capstone (BIC) course.

In this course, I primarily learned about creating a better and more impactful presentation by using less bullet points and by using more visualizations. While this is important, another important thing learned from this course is learning about how to research the available opportunities within BI and what is necessary to build interest in myself as a brand. This was learned through the research and development of plans that I have actively began using to reach my career goals.

Because of the work performed in the BIC course, I have begun improving my Linkedin and online presence. Immediately, upon completing the program, I will be attending a sports career fair, to increase my brand, resources and exposure to sports companies, in preparation of attaining a job in the sports industry. As a backup plan, I will continue networking and improving my skills to attain a job in a different industry that will offer growth and stability.

#BIC BI #BIM

ICS Mastery Journal

Upon entering the Business intelligence Case Studies course, I expected to apply the solutions that I learned throughout the program, to solve case problems. Another goal was to enhance my critical thinking and creative problem solving skills. Lastly, I wanted to strengthen my communication and team working skills.

The strategy to achieve these goals was to complete course assignments, review course material and feedback and participate in individual and group assignments. I was able to utilize resources and feedback to understand and complete assignments. Professor Ramos made himself available to provide support when it was needed. He also provided meaningful feedback for us to use to complete assignments.

Each assignment was helpful in completing the next assignment. The discussion posts and the weekly assignments were a precursor to the main assignment. The week one and week two assignments taught us how to complete the remaining course assignments, for our capstone project.

The content within the assignments taught me how to analyze a company problem and how to approach resolving the problem, using BI. Through the case study assignments, I was able to apply ideas and concepts that were learned throughout the course. A SWOT analysis, PESTEL analysis, preparing and providing a cost-benefit analysis, doing in depth research and relaying this information into an effectively prepared presentation, are some of the concepts that were learned and applied to course assignments.

Eight points were provided to aid in identifying a problem that can be resolved using BI. The solution proposed must be capable of:

1. Addressing a competitive threat or helping the company effectively compete within its industry.

2. Helping the client innovate a solution to a meaningful societal problem.

3. Helping the client increase its market share

4. Helping the client better serve their customers

5. Helping the client innovate or utilize technology that can impact the industry

6. Helping the client use technology to improve or create new products or services

7. Helping the client change the way business is done

8. Helping the client change introduce or do something that is unique

This information will continue to assist me in gaining the necessary skills to complete my capstone project, for next month’s course. My employer is who my capstone project will be centered around. Once it has been completed and graded, I will present it to my employer to propose implementing a powerful BI solution that will assist the company in increasing profits by reducing costs and changing from a reactive to a proactive state.

Given the opportunities available to utilize my education and skills gained, I will be capable of providing value and insightful information as I continue to advance in my career.

My expectations, upon entering the Business Intelligence Leadership & Communications Skills (BIL) course were to gain knowledge on becoming a better leader and how to improve communications skills. My goals were to strengthen my soft skills, learn further project management and consulting strategies and work on finalizing the Capstone project. The strategies to achieve this were to review course material, apply learnings from exercises and review assigned tasks.

The content provided was helpful in achieving this. The content and assignments through week one to week three, taught me about different perspectives of leadership and communication and how they correlate with one another. We explored different characters and situations where we shared out thoughts on what we identified and got from them. We also assessed our own leadership and communication skills by taking the leadership and communication self-assessments. The course challenged us to communicate how and where we could improve and where we would like to be.

A plan was constructed on how I could improve my leadership and communication skills. This plan incorporated SMART Goals and professional and personal desires of mine. It made me hone in on where I would like to go and some of what it takes for me to get there (being a director and community leader).

A first step is continuing to work on communication. This is important for any aspect of life. From a leadership point, you must be able to be communicate effectively to position yourself as a true leader. This extends beyond what you speak verbally, but what you show.

A key ingredient to what you display is your ambition and GRIT. Leadership requires goal oriented individuals with the willingness to push through obstacles to achieve success. Therefore, GRIT and ambition are two characteristics that are found in exemplary leaders.

Overall, this course was able to tie in things that were covered in the first course and tied into various roles and aspects of business. What was covered in this course will aid me in my current role to work and complete projects and work to advance, professionally.

#businessintelligence leadership communication empowerment

Upon beginning the Visualization and Creative Reporting (VCR) course, I outlined my expectations for the course. My goals were to learn about the best tools to present visualizations and infographics, understand the use of design options and explore technical and user interface options. The strategies to achieve this was were to be applied through the strategy of reviewing the course material and infographic information available on Lynda.com.

Through this course I was able to display some of my passions and skills. This allowed me to present aspects of my type one diabetes and my personal business initiatives. This included learning more about Excel and how to achieve gathering and presenting data from numerous sources. I also used Google Docs for the first time. I learned more about social media analytic tools that I will use to aid me in social media engagement to strengthen the posts I make and improve actions and business.

From a professional standpoint, I feel I can improve my work as a data analyst by better understanding how to utilize visualizations and strengthen the presentation of them.

The area that stood out to me the most was the infographics. Before this course I didn’t know much about infographics, though I’ve seen them often. I never thought much about them. Once we began doing assignments on them and displaying our creative and analytical side, I became more interested in their capabilities to display information of various ideas and topics. I will definitely be utilizing infographics going forward, to share social, education and informative ideas to audiences.

The experience and knowledge learned during VCR will help me with my personal business, my professional life and through the remainder of the program. Through the discussion assignments, I was able to learn more about presenting information using very little wording. This could further assist me in the next course – Business Intelligence Leadership & Communication Skills.

Though I struggled with my own mind with what and how to present things, this was by far my favorite course.

#VCR

PML terms

PML Mastery Journal Update

Upon beginning the Process Modeling and Analysis (PML) course, I provided what I expected to get out of the course. My outlined goals consisted of understanding how to support the analysis and improve processes, learning statistical simulation and modeling and learning how to apply key performance indicators. These goals were to be achieved by utilizing Lynda.com and reviewing assigned readings from the course book (Handbook of Real-World Applications in Modeling and Simulation).

Week 1 involved a discussion over data modeling and analysis and a research and analysis project.

The discussion for week 2 was over risk modeling and analysis. The week 2 project was over the business process analysis of our working company. Week 3 covers the decision analysis and operation research through the discussion post and project, respectively. Week 4 requires a discussion post over HRM/CRM evaluation and a project over human factors in modeling/ capstone update.

The discussion posts differed from the usual method of researching and providing an informative post for our classmates to provide feedback using the RISE model. In our discussions, we role played through presented scenarios asked of us. This allowed us to put what we researched into a working scenario, providing more thought and understanding of our research. For our reply, we researched concepts and methods that correlated with our classmate’s initial post. We offered our recommendation on how these methods could be applied.

I found this helpful in me further learning how to apply what I was learning in the course. It also, provided different real-world perspectives that can grow my knowledge in decision making on different levels within an organization. This will help me in suggesting solutions, strategies and decisions to colleagues and management.

The next course is the data visualization and creative reporting. The visualizations and information presented through the projects should aid in what’s to come for this course, as it may seem to pertain to the presentation of information.

#ProcessModelingandAnalysis #PML

Upon beginning the Patterns and Recognition (PTR) course, I outline what I expected to get out of the course. My goals consisted of examining advanced data-mining concepts, learning social network analysis and speech and image recognition and learning to apply course concepts to live data. The strategies to achieve this was reviewing relevant course material from the book, social network analysis using R and completing course assignments. I was unable to learn what I wanted about using R for social network analysis due to time constraints. However, I was able to learn more about using Bayes’ Theorem to evaluate success probability.

I feel that week 3, of the course, was the most impactful week. I was able to discuss and analyze my own business in a way that has made me take action to better assess and organize my business records and operations. This will help me in the long-run with establishing pricing models, reviewing costs vs profits, productivity and products. Also, in week 3, we learned about analyzing company stock. This too will help me as I have recently began investing in stock options. Understanding the use of Bollinger bands, whale tracks and support/resistance levels will help in determining the value of stock and if it is a good idea to buy, sell or hold.

Another topic that was interesting that I will utilize is our learning and discussion of social media analytics and tools. With a lot of marketing being performed online through social media, using analytical tools to analyze engagement and peak times to make posts will help me grow my business.

The content and approaches learned during PTR should help in the next course – Process Modeling and Analysis. The week 4.2 assignment prepares us for this and our capstone project. This is through using what we have learned and performed through the week’s assignments to understand how to support the analysis and improve processes.

While I wish we were able to do assignments or something that will help us better learn how to perform what is or may be asked of us, I was able to still learn some things that will be helpful for me through the remainder of the program and professionally.

#PTR #MasteryJourney

Before beginning the Data Mining (DM) course, I detailed what I sought to get out of the course. These objectives included identifying patterns using data mining tools and techniques, exploring data mining concepts using algorithms and applying learned course concepts to large data sets. Strategies to achieve this included reviewing course material from assigned readings, learning excel data-mining fundamentals and successfully completing assignments.

This course was a basic course of the understanding of data mining. The work was more about gaining a clear understanding of data mining, the challenges that hinder its market presence and capabilities and the technologies available. During this course, I learned about how data mining is used in the market and the privacy challenges. I learned about the major data mining processes – CRISP-DM, SEMMA and KDD.

I was able to learn what and how the previous Business Intelligence Analytics (BIA) course contents relate to data mining. The BIA course provided information and assignments that covered learning algorithms that are not only used in sampling, but also used to determine interesting patterns found through data mining.

In my professional career, I am involved in creating the reports and dashboards for my department to impact the business decisions that are made. As a part of this I am heavily involved in finding business intelligence solutions that will increase my team’s ability to produce great insights. As a result of this class and previous work conversations, I have been contemplating what solution and methods would be adequate to make predictions and forecasts and quickly identify trends.

From the Tableau Analysis, I was able to take some of the approaches and resources in to a product demo. This allowed me to compare the demo technology and what was presented versus what I know and understand.

Upon entering the patterns and recognition course, my outlined goals are to examine advanced data-mining concepts, learn social network analysis and speech and image recognition and learn to apply course concepts to live data. Strategies to achieve this would include reviewing relevant course material from the book, social network analysis using R and completing course assignments. I feel the next course – Patterns and Recognition will tie what was learned in BIA and DM to further assist my current and future professional activities and responsibilities.

#DM #Datamining #businessintelligence

#AmbitionBreedsOpportunity

#Progression #AmbitionBreedsOpportunity

#Stronger

BIA Recap

Upon coming into the Business Intelligence Analytics (BIA) course, I expected to understand the fundamental concepts of analyzing data, learn statistical and analytical techniques and apply the learned concepts to influence decision making. This was to be achieved by analyzing user data, exploring the statistics with excel part two Lynda.com lesson and successfully completing assignments.

The course discussions pertained to Data Science, Competition Analysis, Decision Analysis and Business Process Analysis. The course projects were over the Market Analysis, Bayesian Analysis, Decision Making at the CEO Level and Forecast & Prediction. These assignments allowed us to review case studies and apply them to our own scenarios that enabled us to analyze past, current and future business.

While in the course, I was able to learn about concepts and statistics techniques. These concepts consisted of the levels of measurement, sampling types and distributions, measures of central tendencies, hypothesis testing and more.

Upon entering the next course, Data Mining, I expect to apply the statistical methods earned in Business Intelligence Analytics to identify patterns using data mining tools and techniques, explore data mining concepts using algorithms and apply learned course concepts to large data sets to produce insightful information to affect business decisions.

Generally, the final assignment of the course ties heavily into what we will be doing in the next course. For example, in the previous course Business Intelligence Technologies, the week 4 assignment was for each student to provide a business case analysis. The analysis contained what benefits would be derived by starting BI efforts or increasing BI investments for our business, which benefits would we quantify, if we could compute the ROI for the proposal and create a model BI Technical Architecture. This is related to the BIA course by quantifying the benefits to drive business decisions based on the data presented.

I never was thrilled about statistics due to the numbers, techniques and concepts, but I have to say I liked this course. It will help me greatly in the way I evaluate opportunities personally and professionally. I have begun looking at fan duel data and looking at the impact of risks based on probabilities and expected outcomes. I am now looking to see how I can incorporate this in my professional role as a data analyst.

#BeGreat #TheSmallThingsMatter #TheLittleThings #AmbitionBreedsOpportunity

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