Philip OliverSenior Lecturer @

Northumbria UniversityInformation Sciences

• 1 wife (Scottish)• 2 kids (Half Scottish)• 0 dogs• Sunderland & Hibs

supporter

Where the rain forest meets the ocean

Gill & Bertie

Me

??

Business Issues/Drivers

The IT Value Hierarchy (Urwiler & Frolick, 2008)

Pyramid of Needs

Metaphorically Speaking…

Big Data!

The amount of information created and replicated will surpass 1.9 zettabytes (1.8 trillion gigabytes) in 2011 – growing by a factor of 9 in just five years.

Recent IDC Digital Universe study

Who is best placed and skilled to deal with all of this data??

Are we producing graduates capable of doing these jobs?

A McKinsey Global Institute report in 2011 projected that the US will need 1.5 million “data-savvy managers and analysts” by 2018 to take full

advantage of big data.

Who are these graduates and where will they

come from?

That’s a lot of skills for 1 person!!

And do they need other skills too?

And how can we possibly fill the demand?

• A McKinsey Global Institute report in 2011 projected that the US will need 1.5 million “data-savvy managers and analysts” by 2018 to take full advantage of big data.

• A separate international survey sponsored by BI Congress II found that graduating students lack the required ‘data-savvy’ knowledge today.

• Michael Goul, professor of Information Systems and Teradata University Network Executive Board member stated , “As professors, we’re concerned that our students graduate with not only the technical knowledge they need to be analytics professionals, but also the business understanding to put that knowledge to use” (Teradata, 2012).

• Jason Hiner, editor in chief of TechRepublic talks about the role of the ‘Data Scientist’ not being new but that it has evolved into one of the hottest jobs in technology today. He states that IBM have suggested there will be 1.2 million new jobs in big data analytics created over the next decade with a large portion of those being for ‘data scientists’.

So, what’s the state of BI education?

In the US, Barbara Wixom and Thilini Ariyachandra conducted a survey in collaboration with Teradata University Network (TUN) in 2010…

…identifying the wide skill set required for graduates, and the need to cultivate collaboration between different disciplines e.g. IS, Business, Maths to provide a holistic grounding in BI.

IS & Maths – seems logical… but Business!!!

Technology - Technology is a use of science to meet a need.

Technology Driver - The technology drivers are the critical variables that determine which

technology alternatives will be pursued

Technology Planning - Technology planning is the process for identifying,

selecting, and investing in the technologies that are required to support those product

and service requirements

Technology Roadmap - A technology roadmap is the output of the technology

road mapping process at either the corporate or the industry level.

(Garcia & Bray, 1997)

This Way!

So, the overall aim of the research is to provide a framework for BI education in UK universities. The objectives to achieve this aim are:• Identify business BI needs• Identify skills sets that need improving or are

missing• Identify the existing HE provision of BI

education• Identify the gap between the two• Develop a BI education framework to

narrow/fill the gap

Research paradigm

 

Research methodology

 

Research method

 

Research technique

 

Research instrument

       

Interpretivist   Qualitative   Lit Review & Case studies

  Interview and/or questionnaire

  Data analysis - thematic coding

e.g. NVivo

How ???

Hopefully a bit of business

acumen, common sense

and tact!!