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The Information Needs/Organisation Unit/Location Matrix Deliverable Template

attempts to develop an understanding of the information needs of each organisational unit

for the different information categories. It needs to focus on end-users of information, andtherefore relate to the information platform and the different locations where Business

Intelligence users operate.

Steps needed to accomplish this task:

• Obtain an organisation chart for the enterprise

• Produce a list of the organisation units that either create or use an information

need within the scope of the project.

• Produce a list of the locations that will need to access the information from the

system

• Create a matrix associating those units and locations to the information needs

identified previously

How do you keep your list of contacts? In this article Builder columnist Scott Withrowlooks at information flow through social network analysis.

When I became an application development manager, one of the more important skills Ilearned was to keep organised lists. One list I maintain (albeit informally) is my "experts"

list, which contains a directory of subject matter experts that I can contact for help on a

 particular subject.

It takes a significant amount of time to develop and maintain this list, but it's invaluablein a crisis when I need a quick answer or input from an expert. It's so difficult to maintain

this list because employees tend to change roles more frequently than I need their advice.

While investigating how I could maintain this list in a more formal manner, I came uponthe field of social network analysis (SNA).

SNA deals with mapping and measuring relationships among people, groups, and other 

entities (aka nodes). By looking at the level of interaction between the nodes, we can

determine pathways of information or knowledge flow.

For example, John is a project manager, and Martha, Tom, and Bill are Oracle DBAs.When John has an IT-related question, he asks Tom. When Tom needs help, he goes to

Martha. When someone asks Bill a question to which he doesn't know the answer, he

turns to Martha.

If we were to map these relationships, we would draw a line between John and Tom, a

line between Tom and Martha, and a line between Bill and Martha. If we assume Martha

correctly supplies the information asked of her, we can begin to assume that Martha is the

true subject matter expert.

 Now let's assume John has a network question and calls Tom for help. Tom in turn calls

Brenda, a network specialist, for help because her peers consider her the go-to person for 

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tough networking issues. Several other network specialists contact Brenda for help for the

same reason. Mapping these relationships would identify Brenda as a subject matter 

expert for networking.

The new mapping would also identify one more interesting fact: Although Tom hasn't

 been able to answer John's questions, he has been able to "broker" or facilitate theacquisition of the information John needed. In this way, Tom appears to provide value--

not as a DBA but as an information conduit. By mapping the daily interactions betweenthe people within your organisation (a process known as organisational network 

analysis), you can quickly see patterns appear in the social interactions. Subject matter 

experts would have many connections terminating with them. Social brokers (such asTom) would appear as connection points between several mapped groups. Nodes with

few interconnections could identify employees requiring additional training or possibly

specialists on systems that are in little demand.

SNA identifies three attributes to social relationships: degrees, closeness, and

 betweenness. Degrees measure the number of connections a node has. Martha and Brendawould rate highly in degrees. The distance or number of hops over the connections it

takes to acquire a specific piece of information is known as a node's closeness. Bylooking at the example, John appears to be further away from the information than Tom.

Tom is also between two groups of nodes (DBAs and networks) and, as such, has a

higher betweeness value.

Another way to look at the same social map would be to identify knowledge pointswithin your organisation. You can do this by identifying the expertise each node supplies.

For example, let's assume Martha is offered a position in a competing organisation. A

quick review of the knowledge map (derived from the social map) would identify Martha

as a key loss and could possibly influence your efforts in trying to retain her. It wouldalso help identify whether your organisation has someone to take over her role.

You may have intuitively recognised and referred to a coworker as well-connected or the

expert on a particular subject. By developing and routinely mapping the social network within your organisation, you can give your intuitions substance. This would allow

everyone in the organisation to have an up-to-date experts list that is based on real data.