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OMB Data Visualization Tool Requirements Analysis: Birst

Dr. Brand NiemannDirector and Senior Data Scientist

Semantic Communityhttp://semanticommunity.info/

AOL Government Bloggerhttp://breakinggov.com/author/brand-niemann/

July 15, 2013http://semanticommunity.info/Data_Science/Free_Data_Visualization_and_Analysis_Tools/Birst

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Background• DRAFT White Paper for OMB Pittsburgh, July 11, 2013.• Start With the End in Mind, Avoid Tool Wars, and Develop Well-

designed Spreadsheets That Can be “Dragged and Dropped” Onto a Tool That Creates Statistics and Visualizations in the Public and Private Clouds.

• Focus on Requirements Analysis by First Comparing Two Magic Quadrant Leaders on Common Data Sets (Tableau and Spotfire)

• Spotfire Was Able to Reproduce All the Tableau Data Visualizations With Dynamically Linked Visualizations.

• Broaden This Requirements Analysis to Include More Sample Data Sets and Tools.

• OMB Has Used Birst Which Is a Challenger in the Gartner Magic Quadrant.

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Birst Express: Sign Up

http://www.birst.com/learn/free-trial

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Birst Express: Sign Up

https://app2101.bws.birst.com/TrialUserSignup.aspx

See: http://www.birst.com/privacy-policy

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The Top 10 Business Questions That Drive Your BI Technology Requirements

• Question 1: Do you need to analyze data in your transactional applications (Salesforce.com, Oracle, SAP, etc…)

• Question 2: Do you need to analyze data from multiple different sources?• Question 3: Does your organization undergo sales territory alignments, job changes, mergers,

or other organizational restructuring?• Question 4: Do you need to compare performance today to snapshots of performance in the

past?• Question 5: Do you need to apply business rules or logic to data for analysis?• Question 6: Do you need to distribute professionally formatted reports to executives,

customers, or other organizations?• Question 7: Does your organization have employees with different analytic skill levels?• Question 8: Do you want to show reports or charts within the context of an existing

application?• Question 9: Does the organization need to perform “what-if” planning? Or project future

performance?• Question 10: Do you need to perform in-depth analytics that relates data from seemingly

unrelated sources or tables?

http://www.birst.com/sites/default/files/top_10_bi_business_scenarios.pdf

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Birst: Welcome

https://app2104.bws.birst.com/FlexModule.aspx?birst.module=home

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Birst: Sample Dashboard

https://app2104.bws.birst.com/FlexModule.aspx?birst.module=dashboard

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Birst: Get Started

http://www.birst.com/learn/free-trial/getting-started

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Birst: Sample Data Set

http://www.birst.com/sites/default/files/birst_exercise_1_gettingstartedinadmin_web.pdf

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Birst: Help

https://app2104.bws.birst.com/Help/BXE/index.htm

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Birst: Download Data

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B_kI9fp5v0nyZG1VOUMzdVZNVnc/edit

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Birst: Sample Spreadsheet

http://semanticommunity.info/@api/deki/files/24958/SupremEats_2011.xlsx

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Birst Data Example:Spotfire Cover Page

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Birst Data Example:Spotfire Business Operations

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Birst Data Example:Spotfire Data Ecosystem

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Birst Data Example:Spotfire World Countries and Cities

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Birst Data Example:Spotfire Web Player

https://silverspotfire.tibco.com/us/library#/users/bniemann/Public?BirstSupremEats2011-Spotfire.dxp

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Four Lessons Learned Using Dashboards in Government

http://semanticommunity.info/AOL_Government/Use_of_Dashboards_in_Government_-_Been_There_and_Done_That

Federal News Radio: Lessons for Managing Dashboards, November 10, 2011, Wiki and Slides

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Four Lessons Learned Using Dashboards in Government

• The report lists Four Lessons Learned as follows (with a more detailed description below):– Data quality is key to the credibility– Best practices resources are necessary in the design and use of

dashboards– Dashboards are only tools; and– Effectiveness depends on use

• It also describes the Tufte principles of design, which state:– Dashboards should fit on a single page (or screen)– Dashboards should be simple– Dashboards should use the best display medium for communicating

data effectively

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Federal Transparency.gov

http://semanticommunity.info/FederalTransparency.gov

Data Scientist's Audition for the Recovery Independent Advisory Panel

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FederalTransparency.gov Spotfire: Recovery.gov

Filters

Details-on-Demand

History of Spending Spending Versus Jobs

Tufte-like Lights-On-Map

Interactivity of Data in Visualizations

Big Data Set

Story and Metadata

599,743 Rows and 98 Columns

https://silverspotfire.tibco.com/us/library#/users/bniemann/Public?FederalTransparency-Spotfire

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Some Conclusions and Recommendations

• OMB Has Used Birst and Semantic Community Was Able to Reproduce the Birst Sample Dashboard With Spotfire.

• Semantic Community Has Used The Four Lessons Learned Using Dashboards in Government and Tufte’s Principles of Design in Recreating 7 of the 11 Administration Dashboards.

• The FederalTransparency.gov Spotfire Dashboards Are This Data Scientist's Audition for the Recovery Independent Advisory Panel and Show That Spotfire Is Able to Create Multiple Industrial-Strength Dashboards.

• Semantic Community Will Continue to Use The Gartner Magic Quadrant Leader Tools and Their Sample Data Sets and to Recreate Visualizations and Dashboards.