Monitoring Quarter

Monitoring Quarter (hereinafter, the Quarter) is the first of four lectures of Operations Quadrivium (hereinafter, the Quadrivium):

• The Quarter is designed to introduce its learners to enterprise discovery, or, in other words, to concepts related to obtaining data needed to administer the enterprise effort; and
• The Quadrivium examines concepts of administering various types of enterprises known as enterprise administration as a whole.

The Quadrivium is the first of seven modules of Septem Artes Administrativi, which is a course designed to introduce its learners to general concepts in business administration, management, and organizational behavior.

Outline

The predecessor lecture is Project Management Quarter.

Concepts

1. Monitoring. A continuous process of collecting enterprise data.
   • Internal sources monitoring. Monitoring of internal data sources; these sources include knowledge bases, business surveillance, enterprise acquisitions, communications, and the bookkeping system.
   • Market sources monitoring. Monitoring of industry contracts, market data, and competitive intelligence.
   • Stakeholder sources monitoring. Monitoring of stakeholders.
   • Regulatory sources monitoring. Monitoring of regulatory information.
2. Enterprise discovery. All activities resulted in obtaining of any data relevant to further effort development undertaken in order to achieve the effort goal or goals.
3. Indicator. An indicator identifies a specific numerical measurement that indicates progress toward achieving an impact, output, activity or input. See also metric.
   • Metric. A metric is a quantifiable level of an indicator that an organization wants to accomplish at a specific point in time.
   • Metrics. Measures of performance that observe progress and evaluate trends within an organization.
4. Enterprise environment. The combined internal and external factors and forces, both standing alone and interacting with one another, that affect or can potentially affect the enterprise's performance.
   • Micro environment. Consideration of firm, project or client imposed policies and procedures applicable in the procurement actions.
   • Macro environment. Consideration, interrelationship and action of outside changes such as legal, social, economic, political or technological which may directly or indirectly influence specific procurement actions.
5. Business surveillance.
6. Enterprise data. All data that has been gathered to support all of the enterprise efforts.
   • Data. Factual communications, raw documents, unprocessed measurements, and/or recorded observations collected for further analysis in order to create information.
7. Data source. A place, person, or thing from which data comes or can be obtained.
   • Internal data source. Intra-firm sources and records including historical data on similar procurements, cost and performance data on various suppliers and other data which could assist in proposed procurements.
   • External data source. Extra-firm sources including industry contracts, market data, competitive intelligence and regulatory information which could aid procurement decision-making.
8. Data origin.
   • Human communications. Data generated by an informational exchange between two or more people.
   • Document data. Data that one or more pieces of written, printed, or electronic matter contains.
   • Media data. Data that one or more pieces of audio- and/or visual matter contains.
   • Measurement data. Data that is obtained by one or more datapoint devices.
   • Reconnaissance data. Data generated by observations.
9. Data collection mode.
   • Automatic data collection.
   • Controlled data collection.
10. Metadata. Data about data; it may include data sources, geolocation, the chronology related to data creation and further movement, data contexts, etc.
    • Metadata. Metadata is information that is used to understand the context and validity of information recorded in a system.
    • Metadata. Data that gives information about what the primary data is about (e.g., if a photo is the primary data, its metadata might consist of what its resolution is, when the photo was taken, etc.).
11. Data research.
    • Qualitative research.
    • Quantitative research.
12. Data structure.
    • Structured data.
    • Unstructured data.
    • Data validation.
13. Appreciative inquiry. An approach that seeks to identify the unique qualities and special strengths of an organization, which can then be built on to improve performance.

Methods

1. Media research. The data-gathering technique that is based on a systematic study of audio- and visual- materials in order to gather data.
2. Documentation study (also known as document research and document analysis). The data-gathering technique that is based on a systematic study of documents in order to gather data. In business analysis, document review is a means to elicit requirements of an existing system by studying available documentation and identifying relevant information.
3. Meeting. An occasional or arranged gathering of people for informational, emotional, or physical exchanges; particularly, this gathering can serve as a data-gathering technique.
   • Town hall meeting. An informal public meeting where information can be relayed, issues can be discussed, or employees can be brought together to celebrate accomplishments.

Instruments

1. Search engine. A software system that is designed to search for data on corporate networks or, as a web search engine, on World Wide Web.
2. Content gathering.
   • Content management software (CMS). Software that allows publishing, editing and maintaining content from a central interface. See also: Content management
     1. Content management. The suite of processes and technologies that support the collection, management, and publication of information in any medium.
   • Digital form. Online forms and form filing
   • Download portal. Online forms and form filing
3. Data date (DD). The date at which, or up to which, the project's reporting system has provided actual status and accomplishments. Also called as-of date.
4. Datapoint device. Any data-gathering tool that counts, detects, gauges, meters, records, scales, scores, senses, surveys, and/or tests somebody or something and is located at some point where relevant data can be gathered.

Results

1. Knowledge base.
2. Stakeholder register. A listing of the stakeholders affected by a business need or proposed solution and a description of their participation in a project or other initiative.

Practices

The successor lecture is Controlling Quarter.

Materials

Texts and graphics

• https://cyfar.org/data-collection-techniques