The Dashboard Effect

Brick sits down with Jennie Swenson, Blue Margin's Director of the PMO, to discuss the project management approach she and her PMs take to delivering successful BI projects.

Visit our podcast website at https://podcast.thedashboardeffect.com

Brick and Caleb discuss Blue Margin's shift from time-and-materials to fixed-price billing. The change has materially improved the outcomes of their projects for clients and for Blue Margin. Some of the benefits are not intuitively obvious but will make sense to most billing professionals.

For a great resource on fixed-price billing, check out Jonathan Stark. His focus is more on "value pricing" rather than simply fixed-pricing, but most of the concepts apply to both.

Brick and Caleb discuss the different types of data sources you might run into when building reports or a data warehouse. They also talk about approaches for combining data from different systems and dealing with data redundancy. This one gets a little bit technical.

For further reading: Succeed with BI: Manage Data Sources, Integration, and Redundancy (bluemargin.com)

Jon Thompson, Cofounder and Chief Strategy Officer at Blue Margin, sits down with Jill Belconis, career CEO at Shelter Mortgage turned strategic business coach. They discuss taking an offensive stance during cyclical economic downturns, focusing on your “one thing,” using a job scorecard (BI) for accountability, not going it alone, and overcoming resistance when creating a data-driven culture.

For further reading: Jill Belconis on Scaling Business with Clarity and (Data) Alignment (bluemargin.com)

Podcast Links (in order of appearance):
www.jillbelconis.com
Young President’s Organization (YPO)
Carver Peterson
National Bureau of Economic Research – Business Cycles Since 1940s
Jim Collins’ Flywheel Concept
Jill’s Blog Article – Focusing on the One Thing
Jill’s Blog Article – The Job Scorecard
Scaling Up
Patrick Lencioni’s New Book – The Working Genius
Patrick Lencioni’s Five Dysfunctions of a Team
Jill’s TED Talk

Brick and Caleb discuss how an organization can quickly start doing real BI. Getting going is easier than you might think, but there are a few key things to keep in mind.

For further reading: The Quick Path to Winning with Data and Dashboards (bluemargin.com)

Brick and Caleb discuss why a BI project can and should be much more agile than something like an ERP implementation, delivering results and value quickly.

For further reading: Starting a BI Initiative? Choose Agile Over Waterfall (bluemargin.com)

Brick and Will discuss the significant benefits of spending time up front on report design before jumping into the reporting tool to do the actual build.

Brick and Caleb discuss the importance of aligning on the definition of metrics. It seems obvious, but can be tricky if you're not careful.

For further reading: 2 Essential Ingredients of Successful Data Projects (bluemargin.com)

Brick and Caleb discuss defining the impact a BI effort is expected to deliver so you can decide whether it is worth the effort or can be achieved in a simpler way.

For further reading: 2 Essential Ingredients of Successful Data Projects (bluemargin.com)

Brick and Kate discuss the different roles within a company that typically own the BI function and some of the potential pros and cons of each.