{"id":91,"date":"2012-05-09T14:16:46","date_gmt":"2012-05-09T22:16:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/awaconsulting.ca\/?p=91"},"modified":"2013-02-21T20:07:45","modified_gmt":"2013-02-22T04:07:45","slug":"presenting-data-it-systems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/awaconsulting.ca\/?p=91","title":{"rendered":"Presenting data: IT systems"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Systems<\/a>

Example of a systems word cloud<\/p><\/div>\n

As part of determining the core business processes, you should also have collected the information technology systems those processes depend upon.\u00a0\u00a0 How do you intend to present that information?<\/p>\n

One option is simply a list of systems and associated values such as the number of people needing a given system and the time-lines of that need.\u00a0\u00a0 While technically complete and of crucial importance to your IT folk, a tabulated list is not terribly interesting when presenting your BIA results to, say, your senior executive.\u00a0\u00a0 Especially, as is likely, it is a very long list of all your hardware, software and infrastructure systems.<\/p>\n

What follows is a suggestion for presenting the same information in a graphical format:\u00a0 a word-cloud.\u00a0\u00a0 Also known as a \u201ctag cloud<\/a>\u201d, you\u2019ve probably seen them popping up on various web sites as a way of displaying links to various topics and their relative frequency.<\/p>\n

Creating your own word-cloud of systems is fairly straight-forward.\u00a0\u00a0 Various software is out there which will take a list of terms and return a word cloud arranged according to your specifications.\u00a0\u00a0 The example image attached to this post uses relative size to capture the number of people using a given system and the colour to indicate the nature of the system (for example, hardware, web application, etc.).\u00a0\u00a0 An alternative option would be to shade the systems in terms of how quickly they are needed:\u00a0 bright, saturated colours would indicate immediate need with pale, attenuated colours indicating a system only needed several weeks after an event.\u00a0\u00a0 Or, let free your inner artist and choose your own parameters.<\/p>\n

All that really matters is that the option makes sense to you and<\/em> to those to whom you are presenting the data.\u00a0\u00a0 Also, don\u2019t be afraid of presenting the same data in different ways to different audiences.<\/p>\n

The point of the exercise is to present your information in a way which is useful and clear.<\/p>\n

Do you have any preferred ways of presenting data?\u00a0\u00a0 If so, I’d enjoy chatting to you about them.<\/p>\n

Good luck and have fun!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As part of determining the core business processes, you should also have collected the information technology systems those processes depend upon.\u00a0\u00a0 How do you intend to present that information? One option is simply a list of systems and associated values such as the number of people needing a given system and the time-lines of that need.\u00a0\u00a0 While technically complete and of crucial importance to your IT folk, a tabulated list is not terribly interesting when presenting your BIA results to, say, your senior executive.\u00a0\u00a0 Especially, as is likely, it is a very long list of all your hardware, software and infrastructure systems. What follows is a suggestion for presenting the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"gallery","meta":[],"categories":[7,3],"tags":[8,10],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/awaconsulting.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/awaconsulting.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/awaconsulting.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/awaconsulting.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/awaconsulting.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=91"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/awaconsulting.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":142,"href":"http:\/\/awaconsulting.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91\/revisions\/142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/awaconsulting.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=91"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/awaconsulting.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=91"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/awaconsulting.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=91"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}