Monitoring Quarter

Data Gathering 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 Chief Execution Quarter.

Concepts

1. Data source. A place, person, or thing from which data comes or can be obtained.
   • 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.

Practices

• Assumption. The factor that, for planning purposes, is considered to be true, real, or certain. Assumptions affect all aspects of project planning, and are part of the progressive elaboration of the project. Project teams frequently identify, document, and validate assumptions as part of their planning process. Assumptions generally involve a degree of risk.
• Environmental scanning. Screening information to detect emerging trends.
• Benchmarking. The search for the best practices among competitors or noncompetitors that lead to their superior performance.
• Benchmark. The standard of excellence against which to measure and compare.
• Information gathering. The stage of creative behavior when possible solutions to a problem incubate in an individual's mind.
• Market research. The activity of gathering information about both or either consumers' needs and preferences and/or sellers' products on the market. Sometimes, the research is considered being the first phase of the market analysis.

1. Enterprise effort. A determined attempt or a set of attempts undertaken in order to create outcomes of a work package, task, activity, project, operations, and/or enterprise.
   • Work package.
   • Task.
   • Activity.
   • Project. One or more enterprise efforts undertaken in order to create a unique deliverable, most features of which can be identified before the development starts.
   • Operations (or Ongoing operations). Repetitive enterprise efforts undertaken in order to create a specified deliverable or a batch of specified deliverables using already designed process.
   • DevOps. Practice and a set of concepts, based on that practice, that define culture of unifying software development (Dev) and software operations (Ops). Its signature toolchain represents a chain of tools that fit one of the following categories: (a) Code, (b) Build, (c) Test, (d) Package, (e) Release, (f) Configure, and (e) Monitor.
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.
   • Activity. The smallest portion of an enterprise effort that has its own name, input, description, timeframe, and measurable result.
   • Data. Factual communications, raw documents, unprocessed measurements, and/or recorded observations collected for further analysis in order to create information.
   • Enterprise data. All data needed to administer the enterprise effort.
   • Goal (objective). Desired outcome or target.
   • Enterprise goal. A desired outcome towards which the enterprise effort is directed.
   • Enterprise objective. A measureable step taken in order to achieve the enterprise goal.
   • Means-end chain. An integrated network of goals in which the accomplishment of goals at one level serves as the means for achieving the goals, or ends, at the next level.*Problem formulation. The stage of creative behavior that involves identifying a problem or opportunity requiring a solution that is as yet unknown.
   • Problem. A discrepancy between the current state of affairs and some desired state or, in other words, an obstacle that makes it difficult to achieve a desired goal or purpose.

The successor lecture is Business Analysis Quarter.