Scott Thurm recently wrote a piece in the WSJ Marketplace section - Now, It’s Business By Data, but Numbers Still Can’t Tell Future.

He talked about the growing trend of trying to run companies more analytically, more “by the numbers”, and the success some of those companies have had with this approach including those profiled in Tom Davenport’s book “Competing on Analytics” (reviewed here). He quoted Robert Sutton (one of the authors of Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths And Total Nonsense, reviewed here) who contrasted running a business by the numbers with running it based on “faith, fear, superstition and mindless imitation”! However, Scott then goes on to identify two key risks inherent in an analytic or data-driven approach.

(more…)

Project Management is essential for complex tasks. So how do you know when it becomes a Project? It’s not always easy to decide.

(more…)