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Resources

This is a collection of tools, frameworks and other resources that we use.

AIApplicationsArticlesBooksData ManagementData ScienceEthicsFrameworksModelingNLPPodcastsProcessStrategyVisualisation
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  • Bain Management Tools and Trends SurveyThis regular survey is a good source of information on the leading frameworks and tools in use in business.
  • DAMA International"DAMA International is a not-for-profit, vendor-independent, global association of technical and business professionals dedicated to advancing the concepts and practices of information and data management." We consider DAMA International to be a primary source for Data Management methodology captured in the DMBoK publication. We compare and contrast with another source, the EDM Council: https://edmcouncil.org/ They are compared here: https://datacrossroads.nl/2018/12/02/data-management-metamodels-damadmbok2-dcam/
  • EDM Council"EDM Council is the member-driven trade association dedicated to elevating data management and analytics as a strategic business priority. Founded in 2005, we provide best practices, standards and education to data and business professionals in our data-driven world." We consider the EDM Council to be an alternative to DAMA International. We keep abreast of the activities and frameworks of both. This article compares them: https://datacrossroads.nl/2018/12/02/data-management-metamodels-damadmbok2-dcam/
  • Inside the Strategy RoomMcKinsey: We talk with McKinsey partners and corporate executives on the challenges they face creating lasting strategies in a fast-changing world. We also examine the different ways these executives approach these challenges and the new and innovative ways they think of creating a vision for their enterprises.
  • McKinsey: Rethinking the role of the strategistWe attempt to ensure that a data and analytics posture is embedded in the overall corporate strategy so we monitor the corporate strategy theory and practice to ensure we are aware of and aligned with best practice. McKinsey are of course a leader in this area and have been developing their current practice for some years. This is a good reference article.
  • Gartner Magic Quadrant and Critical CapabilitiesWe make extensive use of Gartner market analysis and insights. Two in particular are worthy of note: - Magic Quadrant. In toto, the list of software categories offers a useful taxonomy of current platform distinctions and which tools fill those niches. You have to bear in mind that the grading of the product is a holistic one that might include criteria outside of core capabilities. - Critical Capabilities. This is a much more detailed analysis of what capabilities make up the tools in the MQ and how they compare, so if you are interested in understanding functional elements this report is the more useful. You have to be quick to download the reports from vendor sites who often offer them for free as part of their marketing, because the native links are behind the Gartner paywall.
  • EU AI ActThe use of artificial intelligence in the EU will be regulated by the AI Act, the world’s first comprehensive AI law. Find out how it will protect you. As part of its digital strategy, the EU wants to regulate artificial intelligence (AI) to ensure better conditions for the development and use of this innovative technology. AI can create many benefits, such as better healthcare; safer and cleaner transport; more efficient manufacturing; and cheaper and more sustainable energy. In April 2021, the European Commission proposed the first EU regulatory framework for AI. It says that AI systems that can be used in different applications are analysed and classified according to the risk they pose to users. The different risk levels will mean more or less regulation. Once approved, these will be the world’s first rules on AI.
  • Machine Learning Street TalkThis is a very sophisticated podcast dealing in detail with a whole range of AI/ML issues from technical to ethical.
  • UMLWe use UML 2.5.1 as our default modeling language for describing systems of all kinds. It is industry standard and accepted as ISO 19501. Like many we use it both formally in specifications and informally for representing concepts of all kinds. It allows us to model structure, behaviour and interaction.
  • The Turing WayWe are advocates of using experimentation in all aspects of data analysis and process design. The Alan Turing Institute have a very useful handbook to guide such activity both practically and ethically.
  • Wil van der AalstWil van der Aalst is full professor at RWTH Aachen University, leading the Process and Data Science group, and chief scientist at Celonis. His work has provided much of our thinking on process management and process mining over many years.
  • Infonomics
  • Business Architecture GuildThe primary purpose of the Business Architecture Guild® is to promote best practices and expand the knowledgebase of the business architecture discipline. We subscribe to this body and use the Bizbok Guide as our business architecture framework.
  • Stella ArchitectStella software provides the tools to build models that represent and define relationships between parts of a system. Use click and drag model diagram creation and easy equation editing to simulate and view results quickly. Stella supports system dynamics, discrete event, and agent-based modeling. We use Stella architect to model system dynamics. It is an powerful but intuitive way of representing system behaviour over time and is a key part of our modeling toolset.
  • Power AutomateDo more with less by streamlining repetitive tasks and business processes—increasing efficiency and reducing costs—with Microsoft Power Automate. Power Automate cloud and desktop are the two applications we use to automate most tasks. They offer 'low code' automation capabilities. They score highly for the range of connectors and therefore ease of integration, but we are less impressed with the visualisation of the flows and the lack of support form BPMN
  • BCS Business AnalysisAttain a leading business analysis certification and demonstrate that you’ve met the high standards set by BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT. Over 100,000 professionals worldwide are certified with BCS. We prefer IIBA's global reach but BCS is one of the two certifications we would recommend.
  • IIBAInternational Institute of Business Analysis™ (IIBA®) is a professional association leading the global business analysis community to achieve better outcomes through better analysis. With over 30,000 Members and certified professionals, and more than 120 Chapters, 1,200 volunteers, and 500 partners worldwide, IIBA supports the recognition of the profession within organizations, enables networking and community engagement, provides foundational standards and resources, and offers internationally recognized certification programs for career advancement. One of two Business Analysis certifications we would recommend..the other being the British Computer Association. We prefer IIBA's global reach.
  • Qlik"Seize every business moment with our end-to-end data integration and analytics cloud platform. Shift from a passive set of tools to an active system built to deliver real-time information and drive immediate action." One of the three main visualisation platforms along with Power BI and Tableau.
  • Tableau"Tableau is a visual analytics platform transforming the way we use data to solve problems – empowering people and organisations to make the most of their data." Tableau is one of the three leading visualisation packages along with Microsoft Power BI and Qlik. We prefer Microsoft Power BI because of its OOB integration but we wouldn't get in a bar fight over it.
  • Power BIPower BI is a unified, scalable platform for self-service and enterprise business intelligence (BI). Connect to and visualise any data, and seamlessly infuse the visuals into the apps you use every day. Our 'weapon of choice' when it comes to enterprise-grade visualisation. One of the blessed trinity with Tableau and Qlik.
  • TrisotechStandard-Based Workflow and Decision Automation We think the gold standard when it comes to implementing BPMN2.0 and DMN. Expensive.
  • Camunda"Design, automate, and improve any process across your organization." One of the choices when considering a generic process-orchestration workflow solution. This kind of tool may have been superseded in our thinking by low code automation like Power Automate but is still holds some sway with us because it strongly supports BPMN 2.0.
  • DMN"DMN is a modeling language and notation for the precise specification of business decisions and business rules. DMN is easily readable by the different types of people involved in decision management. These include: business people who specify the rules and monitor their application; business analysts." Decision Model and Notation (DMN) is the stable-mate of BPMN and is used to capture more involved business rules and algorithms. It is less well known and less well supported but once again Trisotech and Camunda are worth looking at. See also: Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN)
  • BPMN 2.0"The Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) is a graphical notation that depicts the steps in a business process. BPMN depicts the end to end flow of a business process. The notation has been specifically designed to coordinate the sequence of processes and the messages that flow between different process participants in a related set of activities." BPMN 2.0 is the industry standard graphical notation and we used to one degree or another on almost every assignment. We like it because it is a rich notation to capture a huge range of process patterns and also because it is executable...it can be implemented in tools like Trisotech and Camunda. See also: Decision Model and Notation (DMN)
  • PRINCE2"PRINCE2 helps to successfully deliver projects of any size or complexity." Original and still the best!! For anyone who wants to understand the domain of traditional, 'waterfall' projects PRINCE2 is still the place to start, even if only to understand what the Agile people mean when they talk about 'traditional, waterfall methods'. The PRINCE provider Axelos now offers a number of frameworks including PRINCE2 Agile so all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.
  • NLTK"NLTK is a leading platform for building Python programs to work with human language data. It provides easy-to-use interfaces to over 50 corpora and lexical resources such as WordNet, along with a suite of text processing libraries for classification, tokenization, stemming, tagging, parsing, and semantic reasoning, wrappers for industrial-strength NLP libraries, and an active discussion forum." NLTK is one of of a group of leading NLP providers (see also spaCy and Hugging Face). Their site is a good start for learning and experimenting with these technologies, not least because they keep they keep the https://www.nltk.org/book_1ed/ book up to date.
  • Hugging Face"The AI community building the future. Build, train and deploy state of the art models powered by the reference open source in machine learning." Hugging Face is one of of a group of leading NLP library providers (see also spaCy and NLTK).
  • spaCy"Industrial-Strength Natural Language Processing" spaCy is one of of a group of leading NLP library providers (see also Hugging Face and NLTK).