1. Who is the intended audience of the report?  Is this a business power-user?  An IT professional?  Executive Level.  All of these persons will be leveraging the reports for different reasons.  They all also have different amounts of time that they will be analyzing the data as well. 

2. Will the user be using the report inside of another report? i.e. Is the ultimate audience someone other than the user?

3. How "fresh" does the data need to be? 

Is it ok that the data is run off the "data warehouse" and is 24 hours old?  Does the data need to be real-time?  What are the implications to the user being able to make decisions based off stale data?  Does the current IT system support real-time reporting on transactions?  Will it impact current users?

4. What is the user's familiarity with the data?  Does the user need the data but is using it to help make decisions based on other systems?  Or is the report going to only be used to try and make decisions, gain a deeper understanding of the current system tha the user is currently working with?

5. What format (.xls, .pdf, webpage) does the data need to be presented to the user?  This is very important.  The layout, format of the data may be copied and pasted, or needs to be printable.  In my experience, ever

6. Does the user need to see both high-level details and "audit" level details? Is the report "live" - meaning, that the user will be doing analysis on it, within the current reporting system (whether that is something as complicated as some type of Business Objects or a simple webpage). 

7. Will the user want to "act" on the data?  Is there complementary systems / screens that the user will want to kick off some type of workflow, process, fire up an email, send a 1000 emails, etc.

8. Does the user need to be guided through the data?  Is there some type of wizard or hints needed within the report to give context.

Tracking SEO efforts is a pain.  I want to have a report that I can see the results of all my efforts to date.  This report needs to be real-time.

The use case is as follows:

I want to see a report that shows all of the 'campaigns' that I am working on.  Each campaign should be broken up into the following data elements:

Data
Campaign Name
Start Date
End Date
Graded Effort
Amount of Time Spent Executing The Effort
*(a) Total Number of Backlinks Created
*(b) Total Number of Tasks Executed

(a) - I should be able to drill in and see the backlinks that I created, the date created and a note
(b) - I should be able to see the task name, date executed, amount of time spent executing, and notes


Filters
Date Range
Person assigned to the task

Sorting
Sort by person assigned to the task
Date
Number of backlinks

1. Start each day developing lists.  The act of forcing yourself to generate content will train your brain to be "creative". 

2. Read about concepts that are foreign to you or that you do not understand.  Seek to gain a deeper understanding.  Try and understand why this concept was important enough that someone took the time to capture it in a book, blog post, etc.

3. Automate parts of your life that should be routine.  Create a plan for the next day when before you go to bed at night.  Do not force yourself to "invent" the next day and waste valuable energy trying to figure out what you are going to do. 

4. Assume the identity of the creative.  Do not wait for someone to declare that you are creative, but rather take on that identity and act as a creative would.  Invent, create, and develop new things. 

5.  Seek to understand the fundamentals of design.  Learn the science behind why certain colors look good to each other, the concept of typography, etc...  Learn to appreciate different types of arts that in different fields than your direct field. 

    1 Schema kinda-free, agile friendly (Simpler to understand)

    2 Continuous deployment friendly (when coupled with the cloud, much easier to spin up new servers on demand,

    3 Flexible Schema / Flexible Datatypes (teams become skinnier, no need for HUGE teams with DBA, ETL, Dev, etc, etc).

    4 Easier to orient to (no need for deep dive into the data model each time for new development staff)

    5 Easy to learn, javascript knowledge completely transferable

    6 High Performance means increased User Experience, less unhappiness with application responsiveness

    7 VERY Fast Retrievals / Inserts

    8 Does not cry under heavy loads :)

    9 Parallel processing (scale out, instead of up, coupled with the cloud)

    10 Real-time (process the 'transactional' system, no warehouse needed)

    11 Easy to scale (autosharding, when coupled with the cloud)

    12 Reliable (when coupled with cloud)

    13 No single point of failure (when coupled with cloud)

1. Give parents / guardians an incentive to come to a once a month parent / teacher conference.  This would through till high school.  The incentives would also be limited to school districts with high rates of poverty.  Incentives would include income tax rebates - perhaps monthly. 

2. Require students that are involved in free lunch / free breakfast programs to attend a rudimentary financial class.  This would be a class where the instructor works with children to teach them concepts such as making change, simple interest rates, etc. 

3. Mandatory class each year would include educating the expenses on running a family.  The expense of pregnancy, rent, owning a house, etc.

4. Mandatory class on the costs of crime and incarceration.  Education on the difficulties of finding employment, of finding a stable place to live.

---

I think classes regarding Shakespeare and the like are important.  However, in the areas of high poverty and unemployment, we need to focus more on skills that children / young adults already need to be thinking about and using and not as much on theoretical classes.

1. Each cabinet install project has a portal generated so that the customer and Home Depot (and their partners) can communicate.  All communication will be backed up and have a date / time stamped.

2. All measurements / photos of original kitchen estimate are posted to the portal.

3. Any additional work that the Home Depot wants to upsell, would be placed on the portal. This could include additional electrical, plumbing, etc.

4. Pictures during the complete install process would be posted.  This would include pictures that are taken after the demo, during install, and finally finished project.

5. Users would be able to give feedback during entire process.  This would allow future customers to see the strength/weakness of Home Depot.  Think Yelp for cabinet install.  Feedback would be given via Survey Monkey style surveys.

1. Typically CSR’s are underpaid.  This is a position that is usually not associated with bonus structure, is hourly, and is entry-level at best.  This type of position on average makes $12-$15 / hour.

2. They tend to be under-appreciated.  CSR’s are told they are the front of the organization but do not typically get much senior management face time, limited career path, and limited training opportunities.

3. They have to deal with problems during their entire shift.  CSR’s do not typically get calls where people are calling them to wish them a good day, but rather because the caller has an issue that needs to be solved.

4. They typically are limited in their decision making ability.  CSR’s do not usually have the authority to solve a customer’s problem.  They usually need to hand the call off to a supervisor /someone with authority to make business decisions.

5. They are measured by the wrong metrics.  Normally, a CSR is measured by number of calls received per hour, not by the number of resolved problems.

6. This is not a position typically associated with upward mobility.  A CSR is not a position associated with career advancement.  It is a position that someone usually takes because they “need” a job and are looking to move as soon as possible.

7. They work in horrible conditions.  Cube farms, dozens of people talking at once, constantly wearing a headset, computer software that does not operate properly, ’nuff said.

A key finding that I have run into this year is that innovation and creativity are not just sudden sparks... but rather they are the accumulation of weeks / months / years of hard work that slowly manifests itself...  Sitting around and waiting for the spark is most likely fruitless for most people...  The spark comes from actually building something...

One thing that I find that hurts my creative ability is my dependency on how other perceive me.  For whatever reason, as soon as others do not respond to me in the way that I would like, the urge to shutdown really takes over.  I have found that the only way to consistantly produce is to shut the world out, essentially, attempt to not care what other's opinions are. 

Someone that I lookup to the other day, said something to the effect, 'you are good at one thing'.  That really took me back...  I sat there stunned as I started counting all the ways that I am relevant and the great and innovative things that I have brought to the table...  But that was my downfall...  Rather than being discontent with their appraisal (and the fact is, they are much more concerned about themselves, then they are concerned about me) - I should be thinking about how to be more and more relevant in the work that I produce. 

Concerning myself and letting other's opinions of me should not slow down the progress and good things that are created.

I used to think that creativity was an elusive target but over the past several months, I have found that at least for myself, that creativity is just around the corner from getting to work.

As long as I am writing down my thoughts, sitting at a whiteboard, writing code and reading, thoughts just keep popping into my mind. The issue is no longer idea generation, but rather the problem is now capturing the thoughts as I have them (without slowing down the thought process).

It seems that creativity is no longer the issue - now the issue is the ability to actually execute on the ideas. You would think that a person who is having all kinds of ideas would love to put them into action.

Nope. Now, for whatever reason, I seem to slip into dreamer mode. I tend to over think, over analyze and plain procrastinate rather than just getting to work. Focus is difficult - because as I start to get working now, my mind is flooded with thoughts and ideas.

This is a good problem to have. It is only a matter of disciple.