Where have all the business analysts gone? Agile seems to have placed less emphasis on having a formal business analyst role. Teams end up looking to product owners and developers to analyze and gather requirements. But that can lead to some frustrations and potentially slow your velocity. Is it time to formalize the business analyst role on an Agile team?
Connecting Snowflake to Esri Coming Soon
Earlier this year, I wrote a brief post about how to connect Snowflake to Esri's ArcGIS. That worked for version 10.4. When we upgraded to 10.7, the ODBC connection appeared to connect to Snowflake but wouldn't actually retrieve any data. Today, I finally was able to connect w/ some Esri folks to learn about their... Continue Reading →
Why is data governance important?
Today, we're featuring a guest blogger. Kimberly Miles is a seasoned IT Leader with 10+ years of specialized experience overseeing technical program and data product management, driving product vision, strategy, and innovation. One of the obstacles to managing data is justifying why a data strategy is essential. For data-obsessed people like me, data governance is... Continue Reading →
Choose your names wisely
Tip: Avoid using reserved words as object names. The other day, I chose a name for a schema in SQL Server that had some unintended consequences. I had created some audit tables to track historical changes and named the schema "audit". It didn't occur to me that "audit" is a SQL Server reserved word. I... Continue Reading →
How does your vote count in the Electoral College based on where you live?
This article is a collaboration with my daughter, Meghan Bailey. Each state gets an allotment of electoral college votes based on their population. States with a higher population get more electoral votes such as Texas' 38 (based on July 2019 estimated population of just under 29 million). Those states with a smaller population are allotted... Continue Reading →
Catfishing Data
The above graph was on the Georgia Department of Public Health site and it shows the top 5 counties with the greatest number of confirmed COVID-19 cases. At first glance, it appears that their case counts have been on the decline. That's great news! Except that it's not quite correct. Look closely and you'll see... Continue Reading →
A Literal Pie Chart
I'm so excited! 314 Pie just delivered my dinner and it's baking as I write this. I ordered several different pies and was wondering how I was going to tell them apart. Then I noticed some shapes on the top of the crust - diamonds, rectangle and a triangle. Their cooking instructions showed the legend:... Continue Reading →
Is it me or a toxic teammate?
Yesterday wasn't a good day. I work on a small "team". We don't really interact as a team ought to. We end up working in silos because that is the path of least resistance. We lack any cross training, change control process, and basic communication. One developer deployed code into production without informing anyone. It... Continue Reading →
Connecting Snowflake to Esri’s ArcGIS
I'm transitioning our data warehouse from on-premise SQL Server to Snowflake. I have a GIS team that uses Esri products and we needed to be able to ensure that ArcGIS could connect to Snowflake. So this is just a quick little How To. Within your Snowflake instance, you'll need to go the Help menu and... Continue Reading →
Morning People vs Night People
I'm that annoying morning person who pops out of bed, ready to take on the day. My husband needs to hit the snooze button over and over again until I literally pull him out of bed. I'm happy, he's groggy. The day becomes night and we reverse. I need to go to bed early while... Continue Reading →