Companies seek professionals who have hands-on experience with new and evolving technologies such as Windows 7, cloud computing, .NET 4.0, VMware, and mobile application development.

Requirements for certain IT positions vary across industries and regions, but firms are seeking the following types of candidates:

Systems and Networking Engineers

Professionals who are experts in cloud computing, Software as a Service, or virtualization are in demand. Those with combined skills in server, software, and networking are most sought after.

Developers

Those skilled in .NET Java, PHP, Silverlight, Flex, MySQL, and portal technologies, such as SharePoint, are in demand.

Quality Assurance Professionals and Business Analysts

With more dollars available for IT projects, managers focus on quality control and assembling more accurate project requirements. Quality assurance professionals can relieve developers so they can focus on coding, while business analysts can help build trust among stakeholders and serve as go-betweens for technology and business.

Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence Professionals

Firms need immediate information that can help them move their business in the right direction. That’s why they seek business intelligence and data warehousing professionals who can gather increasing amounts of data from various streams.

Security Professionals

Data security and protection, especially in industries such as banking and healthcare, will continue to be an in-demand area within technology. In fact, 24 percent of ClOs polled by our firm cited security as their top professional concern.

In addition to specific job-related skills and capabilities, the following credentials are in demand:

• Cisco certifications — Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA) and Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert (CCIE)
• Linux certifications — Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE)
• Microsoft certifications — Microsoft Certified IT Professional (MCITP), Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE), Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS) and Microsoft Certified Professional Developer (MCPD)
• Project management certifications — Project Management Professional (PMP)
• Security certifications — Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP), Check Point Certified Security Administrator (CCSA) and Check Point Certified Security Expert (CCSE)
• VMware certification — VMware Certified Professional (VCP)

Reprinted with permission from the Robert Half Technology 2012 Salary Guide.

There are two significant opposing forces influencing the pace of broad PADM adoption. Fortunately the forces for progress prevail and are gaining momentum. This momentum for PADM will continue to grow, because the majority of organizations are steadily proceeding down the Business Intelligence development path — from data acquisition to storage, structure, quality, retrieval, exploration, visualization, dash boarding, and retrospective analysis; and due to an increasing flow of powerful case studies and industry reports that reveal significant rewards enjoyed by those who properly approach the practice.

Why Most PADM Projects Fail

In a business environment, practitioners are rewarded business impact, not for technical accuracy. Unfortunately, the practitioners chose to focus on building technically accurate models. As such, the model data answer the wrong questions. The results are not interpretable nor are they adapted to the operational environment. Results are not reasonably implementable, not understood or appreciated by leadership, and don’t meet organizational metrics that define success or failure.

It’s no wonder then why a corresponding number of projects (again over 50% when adding the first three rows in the illustration below) did not reach completion, could not calculate ROI, or didn’t achieve positive ROI.

What Really Works in Predictive Analytics

The vast majority of BI professionals do not realize that there are industry standard processes for PADM available in the public domain. Two of the most popular are SEMMA (Sample, Explore, Modify, Model, and Assess, by SAS Institute) and CRISP-DM (CRoss-Industry Standard Process for Data Mining). CRISP-DM is vendor-neutral and more broadly adopted.

CRISP-DM

CRISP-DM evenly applies emphasis across project-level strategic implementation and tactical model development with three phases. The first two phases, Business Understanding and Data Understanding, concentrate on conducting a comprehensive assessment of the overall environment, situation, team members, resources, and objectives. Any organization interested in building more than an independent or pilot model should not overlook the importance of implementing every stage within these first two critical phases.

Allow me to distill the experiences and recommendations imparted so far into a low-risk/high-impact approach to PADM.

1. Start with Training: Whether you are a practitioner or leader, training is essential for appreciating the unique nuances of this particular BI practice. Even those planning to outsource the effort, will interact more effectively with their consulting team, after understanding PADM’s risks, rewards, capabilities, limitations, and standard process.
2. Conduct a Data Mining Project Assessment: While most organizations have the capability to own, operate, and maintain a PADM practice internally with existing staff, it is recommended to have a seasoned data mining expert play the role of assessor and architect of the project design.
3. Implement Internally with External Mentorship: There is no reason that your existing business practitioners cannot ultimately build, operate, and maintain a PADM practice. However, benefit will be achieved with the guidance and oversight of a seasoned PADM project leader and architect.

You Can Do It, Own It, and Reap Residual Rewards

If you are in a medium or large business that has not made PADM a highly profitable part of your BI process, then the valuable prospective insights left hidden within your glut of data are no different than large denominations of money left hanging from low branches. It won’t be long until PADM is a standard function within your BI practice. Why delay the rewards? Like any other BI practice, PADM is not a one-time implementation, but an ongoing process. As such, it would be highly inefficient to perpetually outsource the function. Not only is the talent involved far more expensive than nearly any other IT role, but once the process is designed and established, it’s straightforward for general business practitioners to maintain the end-to-end process.

Related Courses
Predictive Analytics and Data Mining: Model Development
Predictive Analytics and Data Mining: Strategic Implementation

Excerpted from Predictive Analytics and Data Mining: Why Most Projects Fail and What Really Works by Eric A. King

courtesy of photoxpress.com

An important subject left out in many Business Intelligence training courses is the Slowly Changing Dimension, or SCD. When I teach BI classes, I make a point of covering the topic, and it probably gets students more excited about BI than any other topic. And believe me, that’s easier said than done. “Excited” and “Business Intelligence” don’t always fit in the same sentence.

We know a data warehouse is made up of a relational design involving facts, dimensions, attributes, and hierarchies arranged in a “Star” or “Snowflake” schema. Facts are typically numeric values we use to assess the business such as sales revenue, costs, profit margins etc. If facts are what we want to measure, then dimensions like sales revenue by year, quarter, month, customer, or region are how we want to analyze the facts.  Attributes are added to the dimension tables to flesh out the dimension in order to give it more meaning. For example, attributes could be customer demographics such as age or salary range. Hierarchies are multiple dimensions related to each other such as year/quarter/month or customer/region.

So what’s a Slowly Changing Dimension? As the name suggests, it’s a dimension that changes slowly and predictably. The big decision we have to make is do we care? When a customer moves from one region to another, what should happen to their previous orders? If we are not careful, they appear under the new region and go missing from the old one. Not bad if you are a sales rep for the new region but disastrous if you are the sales rep who actually made those sales. Another example is analyzing schools. When a student moves to another school should their previous exam results apply to the new school? Of course not (depends on whether they are a good or bad student I hear you say? Shame on you…). We want to be accurate in all such cases, but with standard dimensions we may fall into the trap of losing sight of that history.

At the dimension attribute level there are at least 3 types of SCD. Type 1 SCD means the attribute is a “changing attribute”, but we only care about the most current value. Type 2 means it’s a “historical attribute” and we very much care about maintaining historical accuracy. Type 3 is for the rare attribute where we only care about the original and current value but not those changes in between, sometimes called “First and Last”. There are some other types but then we are getting too academic for this time of the day.

If we do nothing about our dimension design, we will end up with all Type 1 attributes. This might be OK for “Customer Last Name” which may change, but as long as we don’t need to analyze how many “Smiths” bought a particular product then Type 1 should be just fine. “Sales By Region” or “Scores by School” are classic examples where Type 2 SCD design is definitely needed. And the trick to enable this design is both simple and ingenious.

For the customer who moves from one region to another or the student who moves to a new school, we need to create a row in the dimension table for each move with a corresponding “Start Date” and “End Date” to indicate the period they were there. However, relational constraints limit the primary key to a single unique value per row, so enter the concept of the surrogate key. Within the data warehouse design, the original business key from the operational system becomes just another attribute.  Then we add a surrogate key as the primary key and have that system generate it to be unique. Now we can have multiple rows for a customer or student with accurate start and end dates for the history of the moves. The single row without an end date value indicates the current location. And here is the ingenious part: we only need to join to the fact table using the surrogate key because, as long as we load the data correctly with our incremental load processes, the end user will be able to analyze customer by region or scores by school with confidence of accuracy even when analyzing over time-periods. The “magic” is in the data load. Don’t worry; I was skeptical too, until I tested I out. It’s an eureka moment when you see it working for the first time.

The Business Analysts then perform their analysis as normal, using high performing cubes or multi-dimensional databases, oblivious to the underlying complexity using their drag-and-drop GUI in Excel, and it’s “Business Intelligence as Usual” except with deadly accuracy.

Candidates are required to have:

• 3750 hours of business analysis work experience pertaining to areas of the BABOK® Guide (Business Analysis Body of Knowledge®)
• At least 900 hours in 2 of the 6 knowledge areas of the BABOK Guide or 500 hours in 4 of 6 knowledge areas
• 21 hours or more of professional development
• A high school education (or equivalent)
• 2 references from a career manager, client, or a CBAP recipient

The certification exam becomes available at the end of November. In the meantime, you can download the certification handbook from the IIBA web site and learn more.

Is anyone interested in earning this certification?

Update: the application for the exam is now available online. Visit the CCBA information page to access the application.