January 03, 2019

003 - Mark Madsen (Global Architecture Lead, Teradata Consulting) on the common interests of analytics software architecture and product design

In Episode #003, I talked to Mark Madsen of Teradata on the common interests of analytics software architecture and product design. Mark spent most of the past 25 years working in the analytics field, and he is currently the global head of architecture for Teradata Consulting. He is a true analytics pioneer and a regular international speaker who also chairs several conferences and is on the O’Reilly Strata, Accelerate, and TDWI conference committees. If I only looked at job titles, Mark would be an odd fit for Experiencing Data, but the reality is that Mark has many of the traits of a good design thinker including a good sense of empathy about what users need in the world of analytics and decision support software. It's a rare combination in my experience, so I hope you enjoy the interview. Besides, Mark is also highly entertaining ;-)

Topics we discussed include clay tablets and:

Why Mark doesn’t include his business title on his business card

How Mark's video game development background influenced his approach to analytics

Data-centered approaches (“what was the crop yield last year”?) vs. problem-centered approaches (“how much can I charge for the crops this year?”)

Why piling all the data together and then building a feature is exactly the wrong approach

Mark and Brian’s takes on designing a system that needs to scale as well as support specific tasks

Resources:

Mark on LinkedIn

Research Gate: Big Ball of Mud

Machine Learning The High-Interest Credit Card of Technical Debt

The Theory of Fun (book)

Mark on Twitter

Quotes from today’s episode:

"The reason that these things fail is that people think they need to build an intergalactic data system to solve that problem." -- Mark Madsen

"You don't build libraries by stacking books and hoping to find order in them. You figure out orders and then impose those orders in order to solve the problem." -- Mark Madsen

"Open-ended problems and broad problems tend to not lend themselves to traditional engineering design solutions and that's where you really hit back again on UX as a starting point." -- Mark Madsen

"The interesting thing to me is the knack for software developers and the educational program we have for software development is all based on function,

“What it is you need to do?” -- Mark Madsen

"We used to call it decision support. We didn't call it business intelligence or analytics or anything like that. I still like that old term." -- Mark Madsen

Episode Transcript

Brian: Alright. Mark Madsen, are you there?

Mark: I am here.

Brian: Sweet. And where is here? Where are we talking to you from?

Mark: You’re talking to me from Mount Tabor in Portland, Oregon. The only volcano inside the city limits of the city in US.

Brian: Fun facts, alright. We’re already into fun facts.

Mark: We are.

Brian: Exactly. We have Mark Madsen who’s the—correct me if I’m wrong—you’re the chief architect of Teradata. Although, as I recall from when we met in London at the O’Reilly Strata Conference, your business card is null. There is no title. Can you tell us why there’s no title on it?

Mark: I can tell you two things. One, a chief architect for Teradata services, not for all of Teradata, not t

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By Brian T. O’Neill from Designing for Analytics

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