From the course: Project Management: Technical Projects (2021)

Managing data

From the course: Project Management: Technical Projects (2021)

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Managing data

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(upbeat music) - I can't think of a single technology that doesn't involve data. Hardware collection reports data, chemical and pharmaceutical products rely on data collection and management to ensure they're safe and software products constantly produce, store, move and analyze data. There's a reason the phrase information age is embedded in our culture. Data makes the world go round. Data is also the most talked about area of concern amongst professionals I know. As a technical project manager, you used to arrange database, load it with data and a way you went. Now, there are numerous considerations to be addressed to responsibly manage the data generated and used by technical components. Here are a few that require diligent consideration. Data security, where you store data and how it's protected is in the forefront today. But the problem with data security goes way beyond how data is stored. Issues like fully understanding where data's being created and where it resides are also present. In addition, cloud solution options and managing and controlling user IDs make significant contributions to data security problems. Getting expert advice is important to ensure your technical projects don't create data security issues. Data privacy, while data security is about protecting data from malicious threats, data privacy is about using data responsibly. A full understanding of how data will be used could be a significant deliverable from your technical project and may require rigorous process and legal review to ensure it's compliant. Ensure you allow time and resources for this effort. User restrictions on the use of data is also important. As I was writing this course, iOS 14.5 was being released with a lot of hype about the ability for iPhone users to be able to allow or deny permission to track them or their device identifier. In other words, data privacy controls become easily adjustable by the user. This user specified data privacy feature is likely to become the norm and as technical PMs, we need to plan for that impact on our project. Knowing what data you will extract is important, even before deciding what and how data goes into your database. This is an often overlooked analytical requirement. You need to know what information you want to get out of your solution as this may influence the way in which you store data and how it's formatted. So looking at what information you want to extract from the data you collect is important to produce the best technical project outcomes. Over and above these restrictions, policies governing the use of data exists in many industry areas. For example, in the US, transmitting health related data is regulated and must be encrypted. Ensure you understand the data management regulations specific to your industry and technical components. To help with this, the exercise files include a template which summarizes my recommendations for managing data.

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