Doing data warehousing the wrong way
Ask enterprises how they feel about their data warehouses, and a high
percentage express dissatisfaction. They struggle to load data. They have
unstructured data but the data warehouse can’t handle it, etc. These aren’t
necessarily problems with the data warehouse, however. I’d hazard a guess that
usually, the dissatisfaction arises from trying to force the data warehouse (or
analytical database if you prefer) to do something for which it’s not well
suited. Here’s one way the error starts, according to Sammer: By now, everyone
has seen the rETL (reverse ETL) trend: You want to use data from app #1 (say,
Salesforce) to enrich data in app #2 (Marketo, for example). Because most shops
are already sending data from app #1 to the data warehouse with an ELT tool like
Fivetran, many people took what they think was a shortcut, doing the
transformation in the data warehouse and then using an rETL tool to move the
data out of the warehouse and into app #2. The high-priced data warehouses and
data lakes, ELT, and rETL companies were happy to help users deploy what seemed
like a pragmatic way to bring applications together, even at serious cost and
complexity.
5 ways AI can help solve the privacy dilemma
Protecting privacy while allowing the economy to flourish is a data challenge.
AI, machine learning, and neural networks have already transformed our lives,
from robots to self-driving cars to drug development to a generation of smart
assistants that will never double book you. There is no doubt that AI can power
solutions and platforms that protect privacy while giving people the digital
experiences they want and allowing businesses to profit. What are those
experiences? It’s simple and intuitive to every Internet user. We want to be
recognized only when it makes our lives easier. That means recognizing me so I
don’t have to go through the painful process of re-entering my data. It means
giving me information — and yes, serving me an ad — that is timely, relevant,
and aligns with my needs. The opportunities within the “personalization
economy,” as I call it, are vast. McKinsey published two white papers about the
size of the opportunity and how to do it right. Interestingly — and tellingly —
the word “privacy” isn’t mentioned a single time in either of those white
papers. That oversight is remarkable and overlooks the tension between privacy
and personalization.
Building a Strong Business Case for Security and Compliance
Cybersecurity is not a service or product; it is prudent to show how
protecting an organisation from losses is the only way for any financial
benefit to be gained. Try to communicate to the board in numbers, for example,
show that a £1 investment would stop a security event that could potentially
cost £10 to the company. That way, it should be possible to get the board to
vote on your side by demonstrating the business case and return on investment
in security measures and protection. In order for the board to determine their
investment decision in security, you should give them data that focuses on any
threat vectors that are already evident, such as inadequate services for
security awareness and employee training, processes and policies that are not
adequately applied and recorded or a lack of data backup practices and
patching updates. Formulating a risk/reward equation using a tiered security
approach is a good way forward, as you can then direct investments towards
incident response and detecting compliance. Once you have created a robust and
compelling business case for your organisation, you need to share the proposal
with the board.
How to Stop Failing at Data
Data projects are doomed when the people who plan and the people who execute
don’t have the same tools, the same access, or even the same goals. Data
scientists are really good at asking the right questions and running
exploratory models, but they don’t know how to scale. Meanwhile, data
engineers are experts at making data pipelines that scale, but they don’t know
how to find the insights. We’ve been using tools that require such a high
level of specialist expertise that it’s impossible to get everyone on the same
page. Because data scientists only ever touch small subsets of the data,
there’s no way for them to extrapolate their models to function at scale. They
don’t have access to production-grade data technology, so they have no way of
understanding the constraints of building complex pipelines. Meanwhile, data
engineers are being handed algorithms to implement with the barest context of
the business problem they’re trying to solve and with little understanding of
how and why data scientists have settled on this solution. There may be some
back and forth, but there’s rarely enough common ground to build a
foundation.
Exploring the Gaps in Scrum Mastery
Often people assume that Scrum is just a work management approach that helps
us increase efficiency by organizing our tasks. Instead, it is intended to
enable people to work in focused, collaborative, autonomous teams that use
empiricism, creativity, and innovation to pursue opportunities to deliver
value to customers by solving complex problems. To be creative in solving
challenging problems, the Scrum Team must feel safe enough to experiment,
fail, and learn through empiricism. They need to view each backlog item,
interaction, and piece of data as an opportunity to learn and optimize. If
these things are not possible, the team will not thrive. How do we, as Scrum
Masters, build an environment where this is possible? To help groups of people
form into high-functioning teams, they need ownership, inspiring purpose, and
self-accountability. These traits inspire curiosity and will encourage them to
take responsibility for their own work, how they work as a team, and how they
work with those outside of the team. How do we, as Scrum Masters, build an
environment where this is possible?
Agile/Scrum is a Failure – Here’s Why
The Church of Agile is being corrupted from within by institutional forces
that [can’t] adapt to the radical humanity [of] collaborative,
self-organizing, cross-functional teams. … Agile wasn’t supposed to be this
way. … Agile is supposed to be centered on people, not processes. … But
many businesses instead prioritize controlling their commodity human
resources. … Companies have dressed it up in Scrum’s clothing, claiming Agile
ideology while reasserting Waterfall’s hierarchical micromanagement. …
Properly implemented Scrum or Kanban [should] lead to the desired outcome
within finite time and budget. … Stories as mini-Waterfalls [treat]
the engineer as a cog in their employer’s machine … with no understanding of
the craft, creativity, and critical thinking required to solve such complex
problems. … Scrumfall relies, in other words, on the product team … providing
a complete and perfect specification before development begins. And it relies
on the development team … planning out a complete and perfect implementation
before a single line of code is written. … The invading Waterfall
taskmasters hidden in Scrum’s Trojan Horse absolutely hate
uncertainty.
All About Ecstasy, a Language Designed for the Cloud
Ecstasy’s emphasis on predictability is perhaps best illustrated via the type
system, known as the Turtles Type System, because it is bootstrapped on
itself. As in Smalltalk, everything in Ecstasy is an object, and all Ecstasy
types are built out of other Ecstasy types. In other words, unlike in Java or
C#, there is no secondary primitive type system and chars, ints, bits, and
booleans are all objects. In common with Java and C# there is a single root
called Object — although, In Ecstasy, Object is an interface, not a class.
Technically the type system supports a long and rather intimidating-looking
list of features. It is fully generic and fully reified, covariant,
module-based, transitively closed, type-checked and type-safe. The majority of
type safety checks are performed by the compiler and re-checked by the
link-time verifier, with only those checks in which the types cannot be fully
known beforehand performed at runtime — specifically to allow support for type
variance. “The Ecstasy language rules automatically handle covariance and
contravariance,” Purdy wrote in an email response to The New Stack.
An offensive mindset is crucial for effective cyber defense
Threat intelligence is a key component to developing an offensive mindset.
That’s why proactive cybersecurity auditing can be one of the best courses of
action in stopping cyberattacks before they can impact an organization. To
implement the right changes to cybersecurity strategy, an organization needs
to understand fully existing network vulnerabilities. This can be accomplished
through a few different tactics, including penetration testing and
vulnerability scanning. Penetration testing involves a person purposefully
hacking into a network to identify weaknesses to an organization’s system,
while vulnerability scanning consists of an automated test that looks for
potential security vulnerabilities. Both tactics enable organizations to
better grasp the mind of a hacker and understand the “how” behind a potential
attack. Something else to be considered – under the right circumstances – is
the possibility of hiring a former hacker. Their insight could prove to be
extremely helpful, as aptitude in identifying weaknesses can be a useful
asset. Many former hackers find roles as a penetration tester / red team
member fulfills their desire to expose system flaws while doing so legally,
for the betterment of security.
Why businesses need to help employees build friendships
The past few years have made this worse. At many companies, the entire staff
quickly became remote, and the days of team lunches, onsite gyms, happy hours,
and chats in the hallway disappeared. Suddenly, that company culture ceased to
exist. Even as some people returned to the office many weeks or months later,
many others did not. As companies institute remote or hybrid working
environments on a permanent basis, there are fewer opportunities to build
relationships with colleagues in person. The loss of work friendships is
likely one reason so many people are choosing to leave their jobs, as CNBC
reported. And among those who stay, success and creativity take a hit. In a
recent study, Yasin Rofcanin, a professor of management at the University of
Bath in the UK, and a group of colleagues found that friendship between
coworkers is the most crucial element for enhancing employee performance. The
isolation takes perhaps the biggest toll on mental and emotional health.
Feelings of isolation are deeply intertwined with stress and anxiety. Without
other people to lean on, it can be much more difficult for colleagues to find
the resiliency they need to face each workday.
The three most dangerous types of internal users to be aware of
Cautious users are willing to comply with new protocol changes, but just need
some time to fully adjust. They may need more gentle encouragement than the
typical user, as they take more of a “wait-and-see” approach to new cyber
security changes. This may be due to fear that any changes could disrupt their
workflow. This can pose a serious risk as vulnerabilities are more exposed
during major changes to security. ... Traditionalist users are generally hostile
to change and often do not trust IT help desks, thinking that the processes for
asking for help are too time consuming. Because they do not engage with
understanding how these new changes will directly impact their everyday
workloads, some may either wait until the last minute before integrating the new
security changes, or resist altogether. ... Like traditionalists, overachievers
may ignore cyber training sessions, emails from IT, or avoid learning new
authentication processes – seeing these as below their skill level. However,
this group of users is often overlooked when an assessment is performed, as
through their own experiences, they may feel that the resources within the
organisation are not adequate.
Quote for the day:
"Increasingly, management's role is not
to organize work, but to direct passion and purpose." --
Greg Satell
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