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Competency Question

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A competency question is a test question you write before building an ontology or a theory to make sure the ontology/theory will be able to answer the kinds of questions the stakeholders of a system care about and need the ontology/theory to answer. A competency question is both a specification for what needs to exist in an ontology/theory and an acceptance test for the constructed ontology to make certain epistemic risk is minimized. A competency question is a mistake proofing tool .  A competency question is a lot like a unit test and the notion of extreme programming which is referred to as test driven development . The use of competency questions is an ontology engineering best practice. I became aware of the notion of the competency question from the article The Question is the Contract by Jessica Talisman.  I became aware of extreme programming and Agile software development probably 20 years ago from a software engineer. The importance of these proactive approache...
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Enterprise

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An enterprise ( a.k.a.  economic entity , entity, business , business entity, commercial venture, undertaking, firm, industrial organization , company ) can be small (i.e. small business), medium (i.e. mid-market), or large (i.e. enterprise level corporations). An enterprise is organized and has some purpose or "mission" or "mandate". An enterprise could be a business, a not-for-profit organization, a government agency. An enterprise mobilizes people, processes, and resources to achieve some specific goal or produce some sort of value for it's stakeholders at scale and involves risk, initiative, execution, planning, coordination.  Microsoft is an enterprise; so is the state of Washington, so is the Italian restaurant where I had dinner last night. An enterprise can be broken down into parts in different ways.  An enterprise can have functional units such as departments, business units such as divisions, legal and accounting units such as subsidiaries, or interna...
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Building Out the Enterprise Knowledge Graph

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There is this notion of the " enterprise knowledge graph ".  That term "enterprise knowledge graph" and the base term "knowledge graph" is very overloaded these days.  If you asked 10 people, you would get 10 different answers. Here is Google's definition of " enterprise knowledge graph ": "Enterprise Knowledge Graph organizes siloed information into organizational knowledge, which involves consolidating, standardizing, and reconciling data in an efficient and useful way." Per Object Management Group (OMG) an enterprise knowledge graph is: "Enterprise Knowledge Graph (EKG) represents the integration of information and knowledge of an enterprise and its ecosystem." Per the Enterprise Knowledge Graph Foundation (EKGF) an enterprise knowledge graph is: "An EKG is a semantics-first foundation for an enterprise: it defines context (concepts, relationships, rules) and connects that meaning to high-quality, reusable facts ...
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Business Knowledge Blueprint

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I ran across a term that I really like.  It is a very practical term and the term is necessary these days. That term is business knowledge blueprint . The notion of the business knowledge blueprint came from the same guy that was behind the Business Rules Manifesto which I really like. The Business Rules Community  seems to be the ones that came up with the notion of the business knowledge blueprint . They explain a business knowledge blueprint thus: "A business knowledge blueprint is without peer as a pragmatic basis for developing a high-quality business vocabulary, as well as a multi-purpose blueprint to your company's business knowledge. This blueprint focuses on business concepts organized in the form of a concept model." "We define a business knowledge blueprint as follows: business knowledge blueprint: a concept model along with everything that communicates its meaning, including vocabulary, definitions, definitional rules, diagrams, and related information ...
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Rethinking and Improving the Bucket Brigade

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The first time I heard the term "bucket brigade" to describe accounting and reporting processes was from the book The Future of Accounting . That description accurately articulated how accounting information systems were connected into a flow which included lots of humans, lots of software applications, and  lots of electronic spreadsheets to connect everything together. But then I ran across the lean bucket brigade . Lean positions the bucket brigade as a "feature" rather than a "bug". (Image by Christoph Roser at AllAboutLean.com under the free CC-BY-SA 4.0 license.) A bucket brigade is not inherently good or inherently bad; it is just a tool. But the metaphor of the bucket brigade is a good metaphor that explains work , the algorithm , the notion of the process , and the input-process-output model ( IPO Model ). And I would propose viewing these ideas from the perspective of Lean Six Sigma  and an industrial engineer with a digital first mindset . As ...
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Electronic Spreadsheets

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Electronic spreadsheets have been referred to as "the backbone of the enterprise" and "the quiet engines of a modern economy". Gartner points out  (page 2) that the typical Fortune 1000 company uses 800 spreadsheets to prepare its regulatory compliance report. Those 800 spreadsheets are connected together with what amounts to duct tape, bailing wire, and band aids. Spreadsheets are systems, not documents. Spreadsheets just look like documents . As pointed out by Matt Wood of PWC in his article, The Inversion , (paraphrasing) a spreadsheet is a "network of dependencies" and that "meaning lives in the relationships between cells not in any sequence of words" and  "thousands of logical gates that connect input to output". But to a software application that does not understand the information clothed in that document, the information remains "dark matter" that is "present, consequential, but invisible" to software agents...
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Theory of Financial Analysis

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Financial statements are designed to be analyzed . Analyzing financial statements should not be a guessing game; rather, clarity is better . The threat of inaccuracy should be minimized. A document is a " costume " which a financial statement wears. But don't be fooled by the appearance; just beneath the surface is a rigorously designed logical substrate. I pose a hypothesis and I have reached a conclusion that my hypothesis was correct and I now have my Theory of Financial Analysis . Here is some of the empirical evidence that has led me to believe that there are patterns within financial analysis and those patterns can be explained by a theory . Financial modeling is an approach to financial analysis . Financial modeling is a tool to understand financial information for one or more economic entities and to perform analysis and to guide decision-making. There are patterns of financial modeling and financial analysis.  Here are some of the common financial analysis pat...
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