OMB Data Visualization Tool Requirements Analysis: Birst

1. OMB Data Visualization Tool Requirements Analysis: Birst Dr. Brand Niemann Director and Senior Data Scientist Semantic Community http://semanticommunity.info/ AOL Government Blogger http://breakinggov.com/author/brand-niemann/ July 15, 2013 http://semanticommunity.info/Data_Science/Free_Data_Visualization_and_Analysis_Tools/Birst

2. Background • DRAFT White Paper for OMB Pittsburgh, July 11, 2013. • Start With the End in Mind, Avoid Tool Wars, and Develop Well-designed Spreadsheets That Can be “Dragged and Dropped” Onto a Tool That Creates Statistics and Visualizations in the Public and Private Clouds. • Focus on Requirements Analysis by First Comparing Two Magic Quadrant Leaders on Common Data Sets (Tableau and Spotfire) • Spotfire Was Able to Reproduce All the Tableau Data Visualizations With Dynamically Linked Visualizations. • Broaden This Requirements Analysis to Include More Sample Data Sets and Tools. • OMB Has Used Birst Which Is a Challenger in the Gartner Magic Quadrant.

3. Birst Express: Sign Up http://www.birst.com/learn/free-trial

4. Birst Express: Sign Up See: http://www.birst.com/privacy-policy https://app2101.bws.birst.com/TrialUserSignup.aspx

5. The Top 10 Business Questions That Drive Your BI Technology Requirements • Question 1: Do you need to analyze data in your transactional applications (Salesforce.com, Oracle, SAP, etc…) • Question 2: Do you need to analyze data from multiple different sources? • Question 3: Does your organization undergo sales territory alignments, job changes, mergers, or other organizational restructuring? • Question 4: Do you need to compare performance today to snapshots of performance in the past? • Question 5: Do you need to apply business rules or logic to data for analysis? • Question 6: Do you need to distribute professionally formatted reports to executives, customers, or other organizations? • Question 7: Does your organization have employees with different analytic skill levels? • Question 8: Do you want to show reports or charts within the context of an existing application? • Question 9: Does the organization need to perform “what-if” planning? Or project future performance? • Question 10: Do you need to perform in-depth analytics that relates data from seemingly unrelated sources or tables? http://www.birst.com/sites/default/files/top_10_bi_business_scenarios.pdf

6. Birst: Welcome https://app2104.bws.birst.com/FlexModule.aspx?birst.module=home

7. Birst: Sample Dashboard https://app2104.bws.birst.com/FlexModule.aspx?birst.module=dashboard

8. Birst: Get Started http://www.birst.com/learn/free-trial/getting-started

9. Birst: Sample Data Set http://www.birst.com/sites/default/files/birst_exercise_1_gettingstartedinadmin_web.pdf

10. Birst: Help https://app2104.bws.birst.com/Help/BXE/index.htm

11. Birst: Download Data https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B_kI9fp5v0nyZG1VOUMzdVZNVnc/edit

12. Birst: Sample Spreadsheet http://semanticommunity.info/@api/deki/files/24958/SupremEats_2011.xlsx

13. Birst Data Example:Spotfire Cover Page

14. Birst Data Example:Spotfire Business Operations

15. Birst Data Example:Spotfire Data Ecosystem

16. Birst Data Example:Spotfire World Countries and Cities

17. Birst Data Example:Spotfire Web Player https://silverspotfire.tibco.com/us/library#/users/bniemann/Public?BirstSupremEats2011-Spotfire.dxp

18. Four Lessons Learned Using Dashboards in Government Federal News Radio: Lessons for Managing Dashboards, November 10, 2011, Wikiand Slides http://semanticommunity.info/AOL_Government/Use_of_Dashboards_in_Government_-_Been_There_and_Done_That

19. Four Lessons Learned Using Dashboards in Government • The report lists Four Lessons Learned as follows (with a more detailed description below): • Data quality is key to the credibility • Best practices resources are necessary in the design and use of dashboards • Dashboards are only tools; and • Effectiveness depends on use • It also describes the Tufte principles of design, which state: • Dashboards should fit on a single page (or screen) • Dashboards should be simple • Dashboards should use the best display medium for communicating data effectively

20. Federal Transparency.gov Data Scientist's Audition for the Recovery Independent Advisory Panel http://semanticommunity.info/FederalTransparency.gov

21. FederalTransparency.gov Spotfire: Recovery.gov Filters Story and Metadata Big Data Set Tufte-like Lights-On-Map Interactivity of Data in Visualizations History of Spending Details-on- Demand Spending Versus Jobs 599,743 Rows and 98 Columns https://silverspotfire.tibco.com/us/library#/users/bniemann/Public?FederalTransparency-Spotfire

22. Some Conclusions and Recommendations • OMB Has Used Birst and Semantic Community Was Able to Reproduce the Birst Sample Dashboard With Spotfire. • Semantic Community Has Used The Four Lessons Learned Using Dashboards in Government and Tufte’s Principles of Design in Recreating 7 of the 11 Administration Dashboards. • The FederalTransparency.gov Spotfire Dashboards Are This Data Scientist's Audition for the Recovery Independent Advisory Panel and Show That Spotfire Is Able to Create Multiple Industrial-Strength Dashboards. • Semantic Community Will Continue to Use The Gartner Magic Quadrant Leader Tools and Their Sample Data Sets and to Recreate Visualizations and Dashboards.