Tech hotshots: The rise of the IT business analyst
The once lowly business analyst is suddenly in high demand. Here’s how to work well with the ones you’ve got.
Michael Fitzgerald
July 11, 2012 (Computerworld)
The hottest job in IT right now might be the least “T” of them all: business analyst.
Tech purists may shudder — is it the revenge of the suits? — but 23% of the IT executive respondents to Computerworld‘s Forecast 2012 survey said they planned to hire for business analytics skills in the next 12 months, up from 13% in the previous year’s survey.
“IT business analyst” was also rated one of the country’s top 12 jobs to pursue last year by Money Magazine, which listed median pay for that position at $83,100. Computerworld‘s Salary Survey 2012 listed an average total compensation for IT technology/business system analysts at $84,376, up 1.4% from 2011.
While pure tech is hardly in decline — database administrators, programmers and Web developers also made the Money list — business analysts are being viewed by more and more IT shops, and the corporation at large, as an essential function. “It’s one of the most critical roles in the info tech space,” says Allen Hackman, senior director of information technology at Tyco International‘s Fire and Security unit.
The rise of the business analyst mirrors changes in the world of IT, says Hackman, who asserts that the popularity of software as a service, and the commoditization of technology in general, has made business analysts more important. “You don’t need IT to implement Salesforce.com,” he notes. “But how do I apply it, how do I meet my business need, how do I get people to use it? That’s the role the business analyst fulfills.”
IT departments can have good database analysts and developers, Hackman says, but fail without good business analysts on board or at least accessible. “The make-or-break part of a corporate IT department is really the business analyst. It starts with them and ends with them,” he says.
Given this, he says, CIOs and other IT managers have to shift their mindset about business analysts. “The old view of the analyst was someone junior, who would take notes and take a detailed order of the business, build a bill of materials for a project to bill out,” says Mark P. McDonald, an analyst at Gartner. Now, the business analyst has “been transformed into a senior problem-solver,” he says.
What’s changed since the days of the junior note-taker? McDonald points to three shifts:
- Organizations face more complex issues, with IT expected to help the business side weave together multiple kinds of technology to solve those business challenges.
- IT is becoming more commoditized and more outsourced, and as it does so, its main value to the organization becomes analytic rather than procedural. With the easy value from technology already achieved, IT now needs to show the business it can leverage technology for ever more strategic uses, thereby elevating the role of the business analyst.
- Unlike the rest of IT, business analysts are directly assigned to business units, even if they still report to IT. Analysts, therefore, are often viewed as the premier source of IT expertise within the organization and are typically expected to have the communications and social skills that go along with that responsibility, McDonald says.
As a result, Hackman agrees, business analysts are enjoying a certain kind of job demand, as well as security — unusual in IT today. “You can’t outsource knowledge and strategy and critical thinking,” he says.
Who makes a good business analyst?
Which employees, with what credentials, are best suited to the role of business analyst? Clorox expects its business analysts to be able to help the business side create project requirements, write test scenarios and plans, manage projects, possess enough technical knowledge to work well with developers and bring business knowledge to IT projects.
Not the typical developer skill set, notes Linda Martino, Clorox’s vice president of business engagement and application delivery, who manages 30 business analysts at Clorox.
Martino says that it’s more common at Clorox for analysts to come from the business side and learn IT rather than the other way around. Such analysts come with built-in expertise and understanding of the business, she says.
Many of them were “super users,” people already comfortable working with technology who became even more interested in IT and wanted to meld their business knowledge with technical skill. “They get to become experts and connect their role to whatever the company is trying to accomplish. So there’s a lot of job satisfaction there,” Martino observes.
When it comes to deciding where analysts should fit organizationally, Martino believes it’s advisable for companies to put business analysts in the IT department, even if they spend a good deal of time with their business unit. One reason for doing so is that they may not have much of a career path on the business side; another is job security.
“If you’ve got an IT person sitting on the business side and your company starts to have to make cutbacks or is looking for efficiencies, a lot of times they’ll look up and say, ‘Oh, this is an accounting department — why do I have this IT person here?’ ”
Tyco’s Hackman says he’s seen it work both ways, with a dotted line to either the IT manager or the business side manager. At his unit of Tyco, he has six business analysts. They are part of the IT staff, though they work in an embedded fashion on the business side. Hackman says they function as project managers, serving as the contact point for a business problem solution and often executing the project.
What analysts want: Variety
That type of job description suits Kermit M. Smith just fine. “If I had to program exclusively, I’d probably go nuts,” says Smith, currently senior solutions development analyst at Carondelet Health Network/Ascension Health. “I like having multiple projects and working on them. I need the outside stimulation and the problem-solving.”
Over the course of his career, Smith has switched back and forth between IT and business. He earned an MIS degree and worked as a developer, among other jobs, before getting into healthcare IT five years ago. Right now, he’s working on an electronic health records project that involves transferring 10 years of data to a new system.
But the larger part is making sure it’s the kind of system that various healthcare workers — administrators, nurses and billing employees — will actually use.
To achieve that goal, Smith has spent time figuring out how to tweak the system so it’s most usable and most effective. Carondelet’s diabetes clinic, for example, has specific needs, and some of its input screens will need to be unique to those needs or else workers in the clinic will likely reject the system.
“Sometimes we want to overcomplicate things, when all they want is five things on a screen and a graph,” Smith admits. “A business analyst should be making sure they’re getting information to the place of users, and understand what their needs are.”
What analysts deliver: Perspective
At Northwest Exterminating in Marietta, Ga., Director of IT Matthew Metcalfe employs a full-time business analyst, even though his organization is small with just three full-time IT staff and some consultants to support 330 or so employees.
A little less than a year ago, Metcalfe hired Amy Logan from the business side at Northwest Exterminating, where she did sales support, specifically to take software project management off Metcalfe’s plate. Logan now works with the business side to develop requirements for projects.
Logan is good at working with business units and identifying the issues they’re having with software, Metcalfe says. “She’ll come back and say, ‘If we can do this and this and this for them, we could have a pretty good system here.’ ”
She’s not an IT person, and yet the people she interacts with know that she works in IT. “They see her as an IT person, sometimes to a fault,” says Metcalfe, meaning they’ll do things like ask her support questions. That’s not her role — in fact, Metcalfe says he wouldn’t want to hire a person from IT to do a business analyst’s job.
Not that IT people can’t make good business analysts. Gartner’s McDonald says he’s often seen business analysts come from infrastructure and operational roles within IT, and the benefits to both sides can be myriad.
Effective business analysts bring IT closer to the business, its problems and their resolution. Analysts help IT by adding expertise without adding infrastructure. If their contributions are applied in the proper way, “IT gains ability to deliver value much more quickly and to much greater effect,” McDonald says.
Given all those benefits, he says, it’s no wonder both sides consider the business analyst to be the most popular job in IT right now.
5 tips for managing IT business analysts
How should you manage the business analyst in your midst? “The biggest thing is trying to keep them challenged. Their thrill is new projects,” says Allen Hackman, senior director of information technology at Tyco International‘s Fire and Security unit. “Once a project is implemented, maintaining that isn’t as exciting for those people.”
Beyond that, CIOs and other tech managers advise:
- Focus on people skills… “A database programmer can be very successful staying in his cube and working hard. A [business analyst] who sits in his cube will fail,” says Hackman. The business analyst needs to develop strong relationships with users, so they will consult with the business analyst from the start on projects.
- …but don’t forget technology. Because analysts serve as the bridge between the business side and the technical side, Northwest Exterminating‘s director of IT, Matthew Metcalfe, urges his analyst, Amy Logan, to spend time talking about the technical implementation underlying the business process. That helps the analyst create more realistic expectations with business-side clients.
- Train them with their business units. At Clorox, business analysts might attend conferences about gathering and documenting project requirements, but they also attend the same training and conferences that business people in their specialties (manufacturing or human resources, for example) attend, says Linda Martino, vice president of business engagement and application delivery. Likewise, Tyco’s business analysts attend both formal training events, like project management classes or PMI certification, and business-specific trade shows and industry events.
- Keep them talking to one another. Clorox sponsors “communities of practice” — grass-roots teams that meet regularly to discuss best practices, templates and tools with people who have similar jobs — and the business analyst community is one of the most active, Martino says. These meetings explore topics like project post-mortems, discussion of positive and negative project experiences, brainstorming sessions, or note-sharing from conferences or specialized training events.
- Consider cross-training. Clorox also has started to cross-train a number of its business analysts so they can work across departments. The company’s goal is not only to keep its analysts interested, but also to be more flexible in its ability to meet business needs. “Demand isn’t uniform,” says Martino. If, for instance, she has three business analysts with expertise in HR, but projects in marketing or supply chains have cropped up, she wants to be able to have the expertise to handle those requirements.
Boston-area freelance writer Michael Fitzgerald last wrote for Computerworld on IT and social media.
Don’t show ‘em the money (even if you have it). Here are nine better ways to boost morale.
By Ilya Pozin | @ilyaNeverSleeps | Nov 28, 2011
The ability to motivate employees is one of the greatest skills an entrepreneur can possess. Two years ago, I realized I didn’t have this skill. So I hired a CEO who did.
Josh had 12 years in the corporate world, which included running a major department at Comcast. I knew he was seasoned, but I was still skeptical at first. We were going through some tough growing pains, and I thought that a lack of cash would make it extremely difficult to improve the company morale.
I was wrong.
With his help and the help of the great team leaders he put in place, Josh not only rebuilt the culture, but also created a passionate, hard-working team that is as committed to growing and improving the company as I am.
Here are nine things I learned from him:
Be generous with praise. Everyone wants it and it’s one of the easiest things to give. Plus, praise from the CEO goes a lot farther than you might think. Praise every improvement that you see your team members make. Once you’re comfortable delivering praise one-on-one to an employee, try praising them in front of others.
Get rid of the managers. Projects without project managers? That doesn’t seem right! Try it. Removing the project lead or supervisor and empowering your staff to work together as a team rather then everyone reporting to one individual can do wonders. Think about it. What’s worse than letting your supervisor down? Letting your team down! Allowing people to work together as a team, on an equal level with their co-workers, will often produce better projects faster. People will come in early, stay late, and devote more of their energy to solving problems.
Make your ideas theirs. People hate being told what to do. Instead of telling people what you want done; ask them in a way that will make them feel like they came up with the idea. “I’d like you to do it this way” turns into “Do you think it’s a good idea if we do it this way?”
Never criticize or correct. No one, and I mean no one, wants to hear that they did something wrong. If you’re looking for a de-motivator, this is it. Try an indirect approach to get people to improve, learn from their mistakes, and fix them. Ask, “Was that the best way to approach the problem? Why not? Have any ideas on what you could have done differently?” Then you’re having a conversation and talking through solutions, not pointing a finger.
Make everyone a leader. Highlight your top performers’ strengths and let them know that because of their excellence, you want them to be the example for others. You’ll set the bar high and they’ll be motivated to live up to their reputation as a leader.
Take an employee to lunch once a week. Surprise them. Don’t make an announcement that you’re establishing a new policy. Literally walk up to one of your employees, and invite them to lunch with you. It’s an easy way to remind them that you notice and appreciate their work.
Give recognition and small rewards. These two things come in many forms: Give a shout out to someone in a company meeting for what she has accomplished. Run contests or internal games and keep track of the results on a whiteboard that everyone can see. Tangible awards that don’t break the bank can work too. Try things like dinner, trophies, spa services, and plaques.
Throw company parties. Doing things as a group can go a long way. Have a company picnic. Organize birthday parties. Hold a happy hour. Don’t just wait until the holidays to do a company activity; organize events throughout the year to remind your staff that you’re all in it together.
Share the rewards—and the pain. When your company does well, celebrate. This is the best time to let everyone know that you’re thankful for their hard work. Go out of your way to show how far you will go when people help your company succeed. If there are disappointments, share those too. If you expect high performance, your team deserves to know where the company stands. Be honest and transparent.
Job Titles That Can Sink Your Startup
BY FC Expert Blogger Steve BlankMon Sep 13, 2010
This blog is written by a member of our expert blogging community and expresses that expert’s views alone.
I had coffee with an ex student earlier in the week that reminded me yet again why startups burn through so many early VPs. And after 30 years of venture investing we still have a hard time articulating why.
Here’s one possible explanation–job titles in a startup mean something different than titles in a large company.
You Can’t Always Get What You Want
I hadn’t seen Rajiv in the two years since he started his second company. He had raised a seed round and then a Series A from a name-brand venture firm. I was glad to see him but it was clear over coffee that he was struggling with his first hiring failure. “I’ve been running our company, cycling through customer discovery and validation and the board suggested that I was running out of bandwidth and needed some help in closing our initial orders. They suggested I get a VP of sales to help.”
It was deja vu all over again. I knew where this conversation was going. “Let me guess, your VCs helped you find a recruiter?”
“Yeah, and they were great. They helped me hire the best VP of sales I could find. The recruiter verified all the references and he completely checked out. He was in the top 1% club at (insert the name of your favorite large company here.) He’s been in sales for almost 15 years.”
I listened as he told me the rest of the story. “I thought our new Sales VP would be out in front helping us lead customer validation and help us find the pivot. That was the plan. We had talked about it in the interview and he said he understood and agreed that’s what he would do. Even when we went out to dinner before we hired him he said, he said he read the four steps and couldn’t wait to try this customer development stuff.”
“So what happened?” I asked, though I was betting I could finish the conversation for him (since I had made the same mistake.) “Well, he’s completely lost at the job. When we ask him to call on a different group of customers all he wants to do is call on the people already in his rolodex. When a customer throws us out he wants to get on to the next sales call and I want to talk about why we failed. He says great sales people don’t do that, they just keep selling. Every time we iterate even a small part of our business model or product he gets upset. When we change the company presentation it takes him days to get up to speed to the smallest change. He’s finally told us we’ve got to stop changing everything or else he can’t sell. He was supposed to be a great VP of sales. I’m probably going to fire him and start a search for another one, but what do I do wrong?”
“Nothing,” I said, “You got what you asked for. But you didn’t get what you need. The problem isn’t his, it’s yours. You didn’t need a VP of sales, you needed something very different.
Companies Have Titles to Execute a Known Business Model
I offered that in an existing company, job titles reflect the way tasks are organized to execute a known business model. For example, the role of “sales” in an existing company means that:
there’s a sales team executing
a repeatable and scalable business model
selling a known product to
a well-understood group of customers
using a standard corporate presentation
with an existing price-list and
standard terms, conditions and contract
Therefore the job title “sales” in an existing company is all about execution around a series of “knowns.”
We Use the Same Title for Two Very Different Jobs
I asked Rajiv to go through this checklist. Did he have a repeatable and scalable business model? “No.” Did he have a well understood group of customers? “No.” Did he have a standard corporate presentation? “No.” etc. Did he and his recruiter say any of this when they put together the job spec or interviewed candidates? “No.”
Then why was he surprised the executive he hired wasn’t a fit.
Startups Need Different Titles to Search for an Unknown Business Model
In a startup you need executives whose skills are 180 degrees different from what defines success in an existing company. A startup wants execs comfortable in chaos and change–with presentations changing daily, with the product changing daily, talking and with analyzing failure rather than high-fiving a success. In short, you are looking for the rare breed who is:
comfortable with learning and discovery
trying to search for a repeatable and scalable business model
agile enough to deal with daily change, operating “without a map”
with the self-confidence to celebrate failure when it leads to iteration and Pivots
That means the function called “sales” at a large company (and the title that goes with it, “VP of Sales”) doesn’t make sense in a startup searching for a business model. Sales implies execution, but that mindset impedes progress in searching for a business model. Therefore, we need a different job function, job title and different type of person. They would be responsible for customer validation, finding pivots and searching around a series of unknowns. And they would look nothing like his failed VP of sales.
I suggested to Rajiv his problem was pretty simple. Since he hadn’t yet found a repeatable and scalable business model, his startup did not need a VP of sales. The early hire he needed to help him run customer validation and pivots has a very different skill set and job spec. What Rajiv needed to hire was a VP of customer development, and part ways with his VP of sales.
I suggested he chat with his investors and see if they agreed. “I hope they don’t make me hire another ‘experienced’ VP of sales,” he said as left.
Lessons Learned
Companies have titles which reflect execution of known business models
Early stage startups are still searching for their business model
Individuals that excel at execution of a process rarely excel in chaotic environments
We burn through early VP’s in startups because the job functions we are hiring for are radically different, but we are using the same titles.
Startups need to use different titles to indicate that the search for a business model requires different skills than executing a business model.
Related articles:
How To Discover Amazing Talent For Your Startup
Why Digital Talent Doesn’t Want To Work At Your Company
9 Nagging Questions To Tune Out When Launching A Startup
Should You Hire For Skill Or Spirit?
Reprinted from SteveBlank.com
Steve Blank is a prolific educator, thought leader and writer on Customer Development for Startups, the retired serial entrepreneur teaches, refines, writes and blogs on “Customer Development,” a rigorous methodology he developed to bring the “scientific method” to the typically chaotic, seemingly disorganized startup process. Now teaching Entrepreneurship at three major Universities, Blank is the author of Four Steps to the Epiphany. Follow him on Twitter @sgblank.
[Image: Flickr user welshmackem]
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IT hiring ticks up for the third straight year, and IT pros with programming skills will be first in line for jobs.
Rick Saia
September 26, 2011 (Computerworld)
Slowly but surely, many U.S. companies are loosening their viselike grips on IT hiring and looking to add new staffers to bolster business growth in the year ahead.
That trend is reflected in Computerworld’s annual Forecast survey. Nearly 29% of the 353 IT executives polled said they plan to increase IT staffing through next summer. That’s up from 23% in the 2010 survey and 20% in the 2009 survey. Altogether, it’s a 45% increase in hiring expectations over the past two years.
Tiny Upticks
What changes, if any, do you expect in your IT employee head count in the next 12 months?
Increase: 29%
Decrease: 17%
Remain the same: 54%
Source: Computerworld’s exclusive Forecast 2012 survey, June 2011. Base: 353 IT executives
“We’re seeing [strong hiring] across the board,” among organizations of all sizes, says Mike McBrierty, chief operations officer for the technology staffing division of Eliassen Group, an IT recruiting firm. He says there has been pent-up demand for infrastructure upgrades and investments that had been shelved over the previous three years.
The Forecast survey also revealed that IT managers may be thinking about innovation, not merely keeping the lights on, as they plan their staffs for 2012. Respondents said these nine skills will be in demand.
1. Programming and Application Development
• 61% plan to hire for this skill in the next 12 months, up from 44% in the 2010 survey.
This large year-over-year jump doesn’t surprise people like John Reed, executive director of staffing firm Robert Half Technology, who sees demand for a variety of skills in areas ranging from website development to upgrading internal systems and meeting the needs of mobile users. “Web development continues to be very strong” as companies try to improve the user experience, he says, adding that there will also be a lot of effort to develop mobile technologies to improve customer access via smartphones.
Mobile application development is especially hot in healthcare, says Randy Bankes, associate director of IT at Lehigh Valley Health Network, a multicampus healthcare system in Allentown, Pa. Bankes says he’s had a “god-awful hard time” trying to hire people with skills in mobile technologies. “It’s competitive as hell right now,” says Bankes.
Bill Predmore, director of enterprise application support at the Capital Metropolitan Transportation Authority in Austin, also sees growth in mobile technology, especially in the transportation industry. “There’s more and more of a push to implement whiz-bang Web stuff, along with making trip planners, [bus and train] route data and schedule data presentable on mobile devices,” he says.
2. Project Management
• 44% plan to hire for this skill in the next 12 months, up from 43% in the 2010 survey.
Big projects need managers, but they also need business analysts who can identify users’ needs and translate them for the IT staffers who have to meet those needs and complete projects on time. “The demand has been more for business analysts than project managers,” Reed says — in other words, those who can help deliver projects rather than merely oversee and monitor them.
That’s what Sean Masters discovered when he embarked on a job search in March. “When I was framing myself as a systems, network, security or other administrator role, I was hardly getting any attention,” says the IT professional from Worcester, Mass. “As soon as I shifted my résumé to list those specific technologies used in accomplishing specific projects, I was suddenly framing myself as an engineer who could not only manage systems, but also plan, design and implement them.”
3. Help Desk/Technical Support
• 35% plan to hire for this skill in the next 12 months, down from 43% in the 2010 survey.
As long as technology is used in the workplace, there will be a need for support staffers, be they internal or remote. And in organizations such as Lehigh Valley Health Network, help desk and tech support are points of entry for IT professionals and places to pick up the skills that can advance them into, say, a programming or systems analyst role, says Bankes.
But mobile operating systems “have added a new dimension to help desk and tech support,” says David Foote, CEO of IT staffing consultancy Foote Partners. “There are so many operating systems now that the mobile platform, and especially tablets, have quickly shoved aside the old Windows/Mac OS PC desktop axis.”
4. Networking
• 35% plan to hire for this skill in the next 12 months, down from 38% in the 2010 survey.
Robert Half’s Reed says IT professionals with networking skills continue to be in high demand and have been “for a few quarters.” That demand has been fueled, in part, by virtualization and cloud computing projects. In fact, during his recent job search, Masters says he saw heavy interest in virtualization skills.
Reed says hiring managers are looking for people with “practical work experience” in the networking arena, especially if they have worked in an organization that has migrated to a virtualized or cloud-based environment. In particular, they’re looking for people with VMware and Citrix experience.
As for certifications, they’re important but they’re “not driving the market one way or the other,” he says.
5. Business Intelligence
• 23% plan to hire for this skill in the next 12 months, up from 13% in the 2010 survey.
Eliassen Group’s McBrierty says his firm is starting to see more demand for IT professionals skilled in BI. The uptick indicates a shift from focusing on cost savings to investing in technology that provides access to real-time data, enabling better business decisions.
That may happen at Lorillard Tobacco, says Dan Clark, manager of server and desktop technology. The $6 billion company is looking to expand its use of Microsoft’s SharePoint collaboration software from about 175 users to more than 2,000, he says. “This will require additional head count to develop and administer,” Clark says, adding that he’s especially interested in SharePoint developers.
6. Data Center
• 18% plan to hire for this skill in the next 12 months, down from 21% in the 2010 survey.
Like networking, data center operations will be impacted by organizations’ virtualization and cloud strategies. In particular, Reed says, hiring managers will be looking for IT professionals with backgrounds in data center operations and systems integration.
In addition, the demands of having data available to achieve guaranteed IT service levels underscore the need for people who are experts in disaster recovery and business continuity, according to Bob Cuneo, CIO at Eliassen Group. Companies need to ensure that the systems that users depend on will be there when they need them, and those systems need to be backed up and replicated, he says.
7. Web 2.0
• 18% plan to hire for this skill in the next 12 months, up from 17% in the 2010 survey.
Technical skills centered around social media remain in demand today, as more industries look for ways to integrate Web 2.0 technologies into their infrastructures, and Reed says he expects that demand to continue in 2012. He sees .Net, AJAX and PHP as key back-end skills, with HTML, XML, CSS, Flash and Javascript, among others, on the front end. “Organizations know they need to engage their customers via online platforms, and professionals who can support these initiatives will continue to command a premium in 2012,” Reed says.
8. Security
• 17% plan to hire for this skill the next 12 months, down from 32% in the 2010 survey.
The one-year drop may be surprising given that information security threats are a moving target, but security is a top-level concern for many organizations, especially those that are considering cloud computing as part of their IT strategies, says Reed.
Corey Peissig, senior vice president of technical operations at Mortgagebot, a Web-based mortgage software provider, says security is a top priority at his company. “Strong technical security and auditing skills are in high demand in our business,” he says. “The challenge is that good talent in this arena is sometimes difficult to find.”
9 Telecommunications
• 9% plan to hire for this skill in the next 12 months, down from 17% in the 2010 survey.
“We have an aggressive agenda to upgrade communications systems,” with a strong need for voice-over-IP help, says Laurie Connors, a human resources official who handles IT hiring at Partners HealthCare, a Boston-based healthcare organization that includes the renowned Massachusetts General Hospital.
That’s why Partners will be looking for telecommunications expertise in the coming year. Foote says he sees demand for people with IP telephony skills, and for those familiar with Cisco IPCC call center systems.
Although there may be some concerns about the resiliency of the U.S. economy over the next year, the three-year trend in hiring plans highlighted in Computerworld’s Forecast survey indicates that IT hiring budgets are expanding. “We’re in a cycle now where it’s more about innovation than cost savings,” says Reed. “You can only create so much efficiency, [and] you can only reduce so much cost.”
To top managers at Levi Strauss, revamping the information technology system seemed like a good idea. The company had come a long way since its founding in the 19th century by a German-born dry-goods salesman: In 2003 it was a global corporation, with operations in more than 110 countries. But its IT network was antiquated, a balkanized mix of incompatible country-specific computer systems. So executives decided to migrate to a single SAP system and hired a team of Deloitte consultants to lead the effort. The risks seemed small: The proposed budget was less than $5 million. But very quickly all hell broke loose. One major customer, Walmart, required that the system interface with its supply chain management system, creating additional hurdles. Insufficient procedures for financial reporting and internal controls nearly forced Levi Strauss to restate quarterly and annual results. During the switchover, it was unable to fill orders and had to close its three U.S. distribution centers for a week. In the second quarter of 2008, the company took a $192.5 million charge against earnings to compensate for the botched project—and its chief information officer, David Bergen, was forced to resign.
A $5 million project that leads to an almost $200 million loss is a classic “black swan.” The term was coined by our colleague Nassim Nicholas Taleb to describe high-impact events that are rare and unpredictable but in retrospect seem not so improbable. Indeed, what happened at Levi Strauss occurs all too often, and on a much larger scale. IT projects are now so big, and they touch so many aspects of an organization, that they pose a singular new risk. Mismanaged IT projects routinely cost the jobs of top managers, as happened to EADS CEO Noël Forgeard. They have sunk whole corporations. Even cities and nations are in peril. Months of relentless IT problems at Hong Kong’s airport, including glitches in the flight information display system and the database for tracking cargo shipments, reportedly cost the economy $600 million in lost business in 1998 and 1999. The CEOs of companies undertaking significant IT projects should be acutely aware of the risks. It will be no surprise if a large, established company fails in the coming years because of an out-of-control IT project. In fact, the data suggest that one or more will.
We reached this bleak conclusion after conducting the largest global study ever of IT change initiatives. We examined 1,471 projects, comparing their budgets and estimated performance benefits with the actual costs and results. They ran the gamut from enterprise resource planning to management information and customer relationship management systems. Most, like the Levi Strauss project, incurred high expenses—the average cost was $167 million, the largest $33 billion—and many were expected to take several years. Our sample drew heavily on public agencies (92%) and U.S.-based projects (83%), but we found little difference between them and projects at the government agencies, private companies, and European organizations that made up the rest of our sample.
The True IT Pitfall
When we broke down the projects’ cost overruns, what we found surprised us. The average overrun was 27%—but that figure masks a far more alarming one. Graphing the projects’ budget overruns reveals a “fat tail”—a large number of gigantic overages. Fully one in six of the projects we studied was a black swan, with a cost overrun of 200%, on average, and a schedule overrun of almost 70%. This highlights the true pitfall of IT change initiatives: It’s not that they’re particularly prone to high cost overruns on average, as management consultants and academic studies have previously suggested. It’s that an unusually large proportion of them incur massive overages—that is, there are a disproportionate number of black swans. By focusing on averages instead of the more damaging outliers, most managers and consultants have been missing the real problem.
Success Story: How One Company Nailed a Tricky IT Project
Some of the pitfalls of tech projects are old ones. More than a decade ago, for example, Hershey’s shift to a new order-taking and fulfillment system prevented the company from shipping $100 million worth of candy in time for Halloween, causing an 18.6% drop in quarterly earnings. Our research suggests that such problems are now occurring systematically. The biggest ones typically arise in companies facing serious difficulties—eroding margins, rising cost pressures, demanding debt servicing, and so on—which an out-of-control tech project can fatally compound. Kmart was already losing its competitive position to Walmart and Target when it began a $1.4 billion IT modernization project in 2000. By 2001 it had realized that the new system was so highly customized that maintenance would be prohibitively expensive. So it launched a $600 million project to update its supply chain management software. That effort went off the rails in 2002, and the two projects contributed to Kmart’s decision to file for bankruptcy that year. The company later merged with Sears Holdings, shedding more than 600 stores and 67,000 employees.
Other countries, too, have seen companies fail as the result of flawed technology projects. In 2006, for instance, Auto Windscreens was the second-largest automobile glass company in the UK, with 1,100 employees and £63 million in revenue. Unsatisfied with its financial IT system, the company migrated its order management from Oracle to Metrix and started to implement a Microsoft ERP system. In the fourth quarter of 2010, a combination of falling sales, inventory management problems, and spending on the IT project forced it into bankruptcy. Just a few years earlier the German company Toll Collect—a consortium of DaimlerChrysler, Deutsche Telekom, and Cofiroute of France—suffered its own debacle while implementing technology designed to help collect tolls from heavy trucks on German roadways. The developers struggled to combine the different software systems, and in the end the project cost the government more than $10 billion in lost revenue, according to one estimate. “Toll Collect” became a popular byword among Germans for the woes of their economy.
Tech Projects Aren’t the Only Problem
Software is now an integral part of numerous products—think of the complex software systems in cars and consumer appliances—but the engineers and managers who are in charge of product development too often have a limited understanding of how to implement the technology component. That was the case at Airbus, whose A380 was conceived to take full advantage of cutting-edge technology: Its original design, finalized in 2001, called for more than 300 miles of wiring, 98,000 cables, and 40,000 connectors per aircraft. Partway through the project the global product development team learned that the German and Spanish facilities were using an older version of the product development software than the British and French facilities were; configuration problems inevitably ensued. In 2005 Airbus announced a six-month delay in its first delivery. The following year it announced another six-month delay, causing a 26% drop in share price and prompting several high-profile resignations. By 2010 the company still had not caught up with production plans, and the continuing problems with the A380 had led to further financial losses and reputational damage.
Avoiding Black Swans
Any company that is contemplating a large technology project should take a stress test designed to assess its readiness. Leaders should ask themselves two key questions as part of IT black swan management: First, is the company strong enough to absorb the hit if its biggest technology project goes over budget by 400% or more and if only 25% to 50% of the projected benefits are realized? Second, can the company take the hit if 15% of its medium-sized tech projects (not the ones that get all the executive attention but the secondary ones that are often overlooked) exceed cost estimates by 200%? These numbers may seem comfortably improbable, but, as our research shows, they apply with uncomfortable frequency.
Bent Flyvbjerg is a BT Professor and founding chair of major programme management at Oxford University’s Saïd Business School.
Alexander Budzier, a consultant at McKinsey & Co., is a doctoral candidate at S
The future of IT jobs? It’s in three types of roles
By Jason Hiner | July 26, 2011, 3:00am PDT
There’s a general anxiety that has settled over much of the IT profession in recent years. It’s a stark contrast to the situation just over a decade ago. At the end of the 1990s, IT pros were the belles of the ball. The IT labor shortage regularly made headlines and IT pros were able to command excellent salaries by getting training and certification, job hopping, and, in many cases, being the only qualified candidate for a key position in a thinly-stretched job market. At the time, IT was held up as one of the professions of the future, where more and more of the best jobs would be migrating as computer-automated processes replaced manual ones.
Unfortunately, that idea of the future has disappeared, or at least morphed into something much different.
The glory days when IT pros could name their ticket evaporated when the Y2K crisis passed and then the dot com implosion happened. Suddenly, companies didn’t need as many coders on staff. Suddenly, there were a lot fewer startups buying servers and hiring sysadmins to run them.
Around the same time, there was also a general backlash against IT in corporate America. Many companies had been throwing nearly-endless amounts of money at IT projects in the belief that tech was the answer to all problems. Because IT had driven major productivity improvements during the 1990s, a lot of companies over-invested in IT and tried to take it too far too fast. As a result, there were a lot of very large, very expensive IT projects that crashed and burned.
When the recession of 2001 hit, these massively overbuilt IT departments were huge targets for budget cuts and many of them got hit hard. As the recession dragged out in 2002 and 2003, IT pros mostly told each other that they needed to ride out the storm and that things would bounce back. But, a strange thing happened. IT budgets remained flat year after year. The rebound never happened.
Fast forward to 2011. Most IT departments are a shadow of their former selves. They’ve drastically reduced the number of tech support professionals, or outsourced the help desk entirely. They have a lot fewer administrators running around to manage the network and the servers, or they’ve outsourced much of the data center altogether. These were the jobs that were at the center of the IT pro boom in 1999. Today, they haven’t totally disappeared, but there certainly isn’t a shortage of available workers or a high demand for those skill sets.
That’s because the IT environment has changed dramatically. More and more of traditional software has moved to the web, or at least to internal servers and served through a web browser. Many technophobic Baby Boomers have left the workforce and been replaced by Millennials who not only don’t need as much tech support, but often want to choose their own equipment and view the IT department as an obstacle to productivity. In other words, today’s users don’t need as much help as they used to. Cynical IT pros will argue this until they are blue in the face, but it’s true. Most workers have now been using technology for a decade or more and have become more proficient than they were a decade ago. Plus, the software itself has gotten better. It’s still horribly imperfect, but it’s better.
So where does that leave today’s IT professionals? Where will the IT jobs of the future be?
1. Consultants
Let’s face it, all but the largest enterprises would prefer to not to have any IT professionals on staff, or at least as few as possible. It’s nothing personal against geeks, it’s just that IT pros are expensive and when IT departments get too big and centralized they tend to become experts at saying, “No.” They block more progress than they enable. As a result, we’re going to see most of traditional IT administration and support functions outsourced to third-party consultants. This includes a wide range from huge multi-national consultancies to the one person consultancy who serves as the rented IT department for local SMBs. I’m also lumping in companies like IBM, HP, Amazon AWS, and Rackspace, who will rent out both data center capacity and IT professionals to help deploy, manage, and troubleshoot solutions. Many of the IT administrators and support professionals who currently work directly for corporations will transition to working for big vendors or consultancies in the future as companies switch to purchasing IT services on an as-needed basis in order to lower costs, get a higher level of expertise, and get 24/7/365 coverage.
2. Project managers
Most of the IT workers that survive and remain as employees in traditional companies will be project managers. They will not be part of a centralized IT department, but will be spread out in the various business units and departments. They will be business analysts who will help the company leaders and managers make good technology decisions. They will gather business requirements and communicate with stakeholders about the technology solutions they need, and will also be proactive in looking for new technologies that can transform the business. These project managers will also serve as the company’s point of contact with technology vendors and consultants. If you look closely, you can already see a lot of current IT managers morphing in this direction.
3. Developers
By far, the area where the largest number of IT jobs is going to move is into developer, programmer, and coder jobs. While IT used to be about managing and deploying hardware and software, it’s going to increasingly be about web-based applications that will be expected to work smoothly, be self-evident, and require very little training or intervention from tech support. The other piece of the pie will be mobile applications — both native apps and mobile web apps. As I wrote in my article, We’re entering the decade of the developer, the current changes in IT are “shifting more of the power in the tech industry away from those who deploy and support apps to those who build them.” This trend is already underway and it’s only going to accelerate over the next decade.
This article was originally published on TechRepublic.
Why Fair Bosses Fall Behind
In management, fairness is a virtue. Numerous academic studies have shown that the most effective leaders are generally those who give employees a voice, treat them with dignity and consistency, and base decisions on accurate and complete information.
But there’s a hidden cost to this behavior. We’ve found that although fair managers earn respect, they’re seen as less powerful than other managers—less in control of resources, less able to reward and punish—and that may hurt their odds of attaining certain key, contentious leadership roles.
When Can Fair Bosses Get Ahead? (Located at the end of this article)
Our research, which included lab studies and responses from hundreds of corporate decision makers and employees, began with the age-old question “Should leaders be loved or feared?” We went a step further, asking, “Can you have respect and power?” We found that it’s hard to gain both.
Consider Hank McKinnell and Karen Katen, two rising stars at Pfizer during the 1990s. McKinnell, who’d served as CFO and run the company’s overseas businesses, was known for his assertive negotiating style and no-nonsense, occasionally abrasive manner. Katen’s performance had also won her numerous promotions, and she headed Pfizer’s primary operating unit. She treated subordinates and colleagues with respect and was respected in turn.
In 2001, when it came time for a new CEO, the two were among the top candidates. McKinnell was chosen. One analyst told Bloomberg, “[Hank] is the right guy for the job…he’s got a toughness about him.”
We heard this attitude expressed in a range of industries. Decisions about high-level promotions most often center on perceptions of power, not of fairness.
The same bias was exhibited by students in a laboratory setting. Each witnessed a “manager” telling an employee about a compensation decision. Manager A communicated the decision rudely, Manager B with respect. The students were then assigned to work in a group led by the manager they’d observed; afterward they rated their leader’s power. Rude Manager A consistently scored higher than respectful Manager B—even though there was no difference in how they’d treated the participants themselves. Simply having witnessed the rude and respectful behavior was enough to create the bias.
We’ve long wondered why managers don’t always behave fairly, because doing so would clearly benefit their organizations: Studies show that the success of change initiatives depends largely on fair implementation. Our research suggests an answer. Managers see respect and power as two mutually exclusive avenues to influence, and many choose the latter.
Although this appears to be the more rational choice, it’s not always the correct one—and it poses big risks for organizations. At Pfizer, a cohort of promising executives associated with Katen resigned after McKinnell took over. He himself was pushed into retirement by the board in 2006 because of the company’s disappointing performance. Shareholder outrage over his rich retirement package followed.
Companies can benefit from placing more value on fairness when assessing managerial performance. Our early follow-up research suggests that managers whose style is based on respect can gain power. Their path upward may be difficult, but it’s one worth taking, for their company’s sake as well as their own.
When Can Fair Bosses Get Ahead?
Managers whose style is based on fairness can still gain power under the following circumstances:
• When they cultivate a reputation for ethics and morality
• When the organizational culture is highly cooperative
• When they are going for positions that are relatively uncontentious and that draw on their mentoring and collaborative skills
Batia M. Wiesenfeld is a professor and Sara L. Wheeler-Smith is a doctoral student at New York University’s Stern School of Business.
Naomi B. Rothman is an assistant professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Adam D. Galinsky is a professor at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.
The 6 hottest new jobs in IT
By Robert Strohmeyer
Created 2011-06-14 03:00AM
IT job seekers have real reason to hope. No fewer than 10,000 IT jobs were added to payrolls in May alone, according to the Bureau of Labor statistics, reflecting a steady month-over-month increase since January. And in a June survey by the IT jobs site Dice.com, 65 percent of hiring managers and recruiters said they will hire more tech professionals in the second half of 2011 than in the previous six months.
But which jobs have the greatest growth potential — and stand the best chance of withstanding outsourcing or another economic downturn?
To find those hottest of hot jobs, we’ve scoured listings on IT hiring sites like Dice and Modis and talked with IT execs about the skills they’re looking for in the year to come. Our sources point to a cluster of new job titles created to make IT more agile, more social — and more tightly intertwined with business.
Our results are not scientific. The six job titles you see here have actually been listed, but we didn’t choose them based on frequency of appearance or random sample polling. Instead, we picked them because we think they answer the real needs of businesses that want to prepare for the future. In short, we expect they will pay well, have staying power, and truly influence the organization either now or in the future. When’s the last time you heard that about a job in IT?
Hot IT job No. 1: Business architect
The notion that IT is separate from business has faded into antiquity. Upper management recognizes that technology is not just integral to success, but actually drives the way companies pursue their business goals. To help merge technology and business processes, a new breed of enterprise architect — known as the business architect — is emerging.
“Business architecture is about making sure the whole business holds together,” says Forrester Research analyst Alex Cullen, who researches IT strategy and organizational planning. “It’s a role built around business planning, pointing out opportunities to utilize IT more effectively” in sales, customer service, and other key areas.
Unlike the traditional enterprise architect, whose role is to organize technology to meet business goals, the business architect is a member of the business organization, reporting to the CEO and fashioning high-level company strategy with technology in mind. The successful business architect has a deeper knowledge of the company’s business model and workflow than the average enterprise architect. Think MBA with an IT focus.
“Business managers want to choose the technology that best meets their needs and to have the freedom to walk away from that technology to move on to the next thing,” says Cullen. In a world where execs will one day have the power to provision cloud-based resources for a new business initiative by clicking through a couple of configuration screens, the need for enterprise architects who are glorified implementers will wane. The job of the business architect is to arm managers with the knowledge they need to choose wisely.
In some organizations, enterprise architects with the right experience and disposition may simply take on the business architect role, whether or not they change titles. Nonetheless, says Cullen, “If you want to know about a hot role for 2012, it’s definitely business architect.”
Hot IT job No. 2: Data scientist
Big data [3] — that is, the glut of unstructured or semi-structured information generated by Web clickstreams, system logs, and other event-driven activities — represents a huge opportunity. Buried in that mountain of data may be invaluable nuggets about customer behavior, security risks, potential system failures, and more. But when you’re talking terabytes that double in volume every 18 months, where do you start? That’s where the data scientist comes in.
On the business side, data scientists can open up new opportunities by uncovering hidden patterns in unstructured data, such as customer behavior or market cycles. On the dev side, a data scientist can use deep data trends to optimize websites for better customer retention. Within the IT department, a skilled data scientist can spot potential storage cluster failures early or track down security threats through forensic analysis.
“There’s now an intellectual consensus in business that the only way to run an enterprise is to use analytics with data scientists to find opportunities,” says Norman Nie, CEO of Revolution Analytics, which produces the first commercial application to bring the R data analysis programming language [4] into the business world. Because of the immense opportunity for strategic insight buried in all that data, says Nie, “corporations now have an unlimited demand for people with background in quantitative analysis.”
The R programming language is just one tool in the data scientist’s toolbox. Others range from business analytics software from established providers like SAS Institute to IBM’s new InfoSphere platform to analytics technology acquired in EMC’s recent acquisitions of Greenplum [5] and Isilon Systems [6]. Just last May, EMC Greenplum hosted the first ever Data Scientist Summit.
According to Nie, data science jobs will require workers with a spectrum of skills, from entry-level data cleaners to the high-level statisticians, yielding a range of opportunities for newcomers to the field. As the business world gets increasingly social, the demand for people to plumb the depths of all that social networking clickstream data will only increase. The cliché going around is that “data is the new oil.” A career in refining that raw material sounds like a good bet.
Hot IT job No. 3: Social media architect
Social Web tools and services are now entering business at every level, from back-office IT communications to top-floor business collaboration, partner-connected workflow, and public-facing customer support. As the complexity of social business grows, companies need specialists to make it all work.
Social media no longer means just Facebook and Twitter. IBM, Jive, and Yammer are now the companies to watch, offering social tools for public and private clouds that redefine the role of social media for business. This creates a demand for IT pros with the specialized knowledge to build secure communities within a business network and between businesses and customers.
“In 2010, we saw the growth of a new middleware layer to protect intellectual property while opening things up with social tools,” says IDC analyst Michael Fauscette, who researches social business trends. “You’re starting to see that kind of thing because companies want the benefits of the social Web without the risks of putting their business in the hands of [Facebook and Twitter].”
In the enterprise, says Fauscette, social tools need to work together securely while offering transparency to the business. The clickstream data and other user intelligence that these tools produce need to be accessible and searchable inside the business, yet impenetrable from outside the business.
In large companies, a given company’s social infrastructure tends to include multiple social platforms. Designing an infrastructure in which all these apps can work together will require IT pros focused explicitly on social business.
Because social business is still in its infancy, the range of emerging job titles varies widely, but at least they’ve matured beyond the generalized, marketing-centered monikers like “social media strategist” and “social media manager” that first appeared. In our conversations with analysts, leaders at IT job sites, and socially driven companies, we’ve seen an array of more specialized titles, ranging from director of social business technology to director of enterprise collaboration strategy to, most commonly, social media architect.
What these titles have in common is an emphasis on the technology itself, as distinct from the purely strategic business concentration common to social media titles of the past. These are roles that report under the CIO’s org chart and bring practical IT expertise to bear on tangible business functions. Regardless of the precise title, says IDC’s Fauscette, “There will be more demand over the next 18 to 24 months or so, as more systems are deployed.”
Hot IT job No. 4: Mobile technology expert
“Mobile [7] is the biggest factor changing IT right now,” says Stewart Tan, vice president of information risk management and security at Accretive Solutions. “Building mobile apps [8], architecting mobile strategies, and securing those devices” are the top concerns facing the enterprise today.
Based on the listings showing up on IT employment sites, Tan’s words sound almost like an understatement. One of the most common new titles we’ve run across on IT job sites sounds more like a general cry for help than an actual job listing. In response to the flood of new mobile devices, companies are desperately seeking “mobile technology experts” to bring order to the chaos.
If you have serious IT experience deploying and managing fleets of BlackBerry, Android, and iOS devices [9], there’s ample work ahead. The listings we’ve reviewed consistently seek people evaluate mobile platforms for enterprise use, research and draft device specifications, and support users and developers within the enterprise.
Hot IT job No. 5: Enterprise mobile developer
While mobile application development [10] has been a fast-growing tech arena for years, IT job sites are seeing a rise in listings for creators of enterprise mobile apps. “Companies are looking for ways to make sense of mobile data, develop apps, and ensure security compliance,” says Alice Hill, managing director of IT job site Dice.com.
In some organizations, the programming skills required depend on what’s native to the platform: Objective-C for the iPhone, or Java for Android or BlackBerry. But thanks to HTML5 [11], there’s also a movement toward mobile Web development [8] that crosses mobile platforms. If you’re not already schooled in Objective-C or Java, acquiring deep HTML5 expertise has the dual benefit of a shorter learning curve and greater versatility, though you may still need to learn the quirks of individual mobile platforms.
What distinguishes enterprise dev positions from general mobile dev jobs is their focus on compliance and security, according to Stewart Tan of Accretive Solutions, an executive search firm and consultancy. “Building mobile apps, architecting mobile strategies, and securing those devices” are the top concerns facing the enterprise today.
Hill points to the overflowing demand for mobile app developers on Dice.com, noting that postings for Android developers have now surpassed those for iPhone developers. Nonetheless, listings for BlackBerry developers still abound, reflecting RIM’s tenacious ability to hang on to enterprise customers.
Hot IT job No. 6: Cloud architect
Ask IT managers whether they’re “in the cloud,” and they’ll tell you they always have been. To them, “cloud” is just a trendy way of saying “data center.” [12] But with business executives and investors now tuned into the cloud concept, demand is growing for IT pros who can lead the charge to deliver on the increased efficiency and agility promised by the private cloud [12].
“There’s so much positive momentum toward cloud integration,” says Ron Gula, CEO of Tenable Network Security. “People who can really identify the architecture from a simplicity point of view are going to be in demand.”
In our searches of tech job listings, we turned up dozens of calls for cloud architects, with the majority originating from enterprise IT organizations. Most of these listings call for familiar skills and certs associated with networking, virtualization, and SAN design. Without question, the more advanced your understanding of virtualization networking and management, the better your chances. The ability to explain how your private cloud will increase visibility into IT costs is a big plus.
In addition to establishing and managing a private cloud infrastructure, Gula says cloud architects will increasingly need to be experts in choosing public cloud services [13]. “When you get into the nuances of SLAs, you become less of an IT person and more of a lawyer,” says Gula. The ultimate goal is the hybrid cloud [14], where cloud architects and business management decide which cloud services make the most sense to run internally and which should be farmed out on a pay-per-use basis.
Gula says any business depending on outside companies for significant chunks of cloud infrastructure needs a cloud expert capable of taking on the odious challenge of deciphering the terms of a license agreement to assess the veracity of any service provider’s guarantee. These skills will prove critical in risk management, which, according to both Hill of Dice.com and Ripaldi of Modis, is another rapidly growing IT field.
More changes to IT jobs on the horizon
Naturally, these six emerging roles represent just a sampling of what IT pros can expect to see in the coming months. One big trend to watch for is the increasing specificity of IT job functions.
“What we’re seeing with these emerging job positions is a splintering of monolithic tech functions into more granular definitions. Enterprise skills used to be all-encompassing, just like an MD was once enough in the medical world. Today tech roles are being sliced more finely,” says Dice.com’s Hill. “We see it happening already in even relatively new areas like mobile. For tech professionals, it’s clear that in order to be recognized for your skills, a solid base is a good start, but specificity is key.”
So if you have a broad background and are looking to make a change, a resume tailored to the job you want to pursue — plus a little supplemental training and experience if you can swing it — can pay off. Another piece of advice: Get cracking now. Surges in IT hiring like this one don’t happen that often.
This story, “The 6 hottest new jobs in IT [15],” was originally published at InfoWorld.com [16]. Follow the latest developments in technology careers [17] at InfoWorld.com. For the latest developments in business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter [18].
To login (from unix shell) use -h only if needed.
# [mysql dir]/bin/mysql -h hostname -u root -p
Create a database on the sql server.
mysql> create database [databasename];
List all databases on the sql server.
mysql> show databases;
Switch to a database.
mysql> use [db name];
To see all the tables in the db.
mysql> show tables;
To see database’s field formats.
mysql> describe [table name];
To delete a db.
mysql> drop database [database name];
To delete a table.
mysql> drop table [table name];
Show all data in a table.
mysql> SELECT * FROM [table name];
Returns the columns and column information pertaining to the designated table.
mysql> show columns from [table name];
Show certain selected rows with the value “whatever”.
mysql> SELECT * FROM [table name] WHERE [field name] = “whatever”;
Show all records containing the name “Bob” AND the phone number ’3444444′.
mysql> SELECT * FROM [table name] WHERE name = “Bob” AND phone_number = ’3444444′;
Show all records not containing the name “Bob” AND the phone number ’3444444′ order by the phone_number field.
mysql> SELECT * FROM [table name] WHERE name != “Bob” AND phone_number = ’3444444′ order by phone_number;
Show all records starting with the letters ‘bob’ AND the phone number ’3444444′.
mysql> SELECT * FROM [table name] WHERE name like “Bob%” AND phone_number = ’3444444′;
Show all records starting with the letters ‘bob’ AND the phone number ’3444444′ limit to records 1 through 5.
mysql> SELECT * FROM [table name] WHERE name like “Bob%” AND phone_number = ’3444444′ limit 1,5;
Use a regular expression to find records. Use “REGEXP BINARY” to force case-sensitivity. This finds any record beginning with a.
mysql> SELECT * FROM [table name] WHERE rec RLIKE “^a”;
Show unique records.
mysql> SELECT DISTINCT [column name] FROM [table name];
Show selected records sorted in an ascending (asc) or descending (desc).
mysql> SELECT [col1],[col2] FROM [table name] ORDER BY [col2] DESC;
Return number of rows.
mysql> SELECT COUNT(*) FROM [table name];
Sum column.
mysql> SELECT SUM(*) FROM [table name];
Join tables on common columns.
mysql> select lookup.illustrationid, lookup.personid,person.birthday from lookup left join person on lookup.personid=person.personid=statement to join birthday in person table with primary illustration id;
Creating a new user. Login as root. Switch to the MySQL db. Make the user. Update privs.
# mysql -u root -p
mysql> use mysql;
mysql> INSERT INTO user (Host,User,Password) VALUES(‘%’,'username’,PASSWORD(‘password’));
mysql> flush privileges;
Change a users password from unix shell.
# [mysql dir]/bin/mysqladmin -u username -h hostname.blah.org -p password ‘new-password’
Change a users password from MySQL prompt. Login as root. Set the password. Update privs.
# mysql -u root -p
mysql> SET PASSWORD FOR ‘user’@'hostname’ = PASSWORD(‘passwordhere’);
mysql> flush privileges;
Recover a MySQL root password. Stop the MySQL server process. Start again with no grant tables. Login to MySQL as root. Set new password. Exit MySQL and restart MySQL server.
# /etc/init.d/mysql stop
# mysqld_safe –skip-grant-tables &
# mysql -u root
mysql> use mysql;
mysql> update user set password=PASSWORD(“newrootpassword”) where User=’root’;
mysql> flush privileges;
mysql> quit
# /etc/init.d/mysql stop
# /etc/init.d/mysql start
Set a root password if there is on root password.
# mysqladmin -u root password newpassword
Update a root password.
# mysqladmin -u root -p oldpassword newpassword
Allow the user “bob” to connect to the server from localhost using the password “passwd”. Login as root. Switch to the MySQL db. Give privs. Update privs.
# mysql -u root -p
mysql> use mysql;
mysql> grant usage on *.* to bob@localhost identified by ‘passwd’;
mysql> flush privileges;
Give user privilages for a db. Login as root. Switch to the MySQL db. Grant privs. Update privs.
# mysql -u root -p
mysql> use mysql;
mysql> INSERT INTO db (Host,Db,User,Select_priv,Insert_priv,Update_priv,Delete_priv,Create_priv,Drop_priv) VALUES (‘%’,'databasename’,'username’,'Y’,'Y’,'Y’,'Y’,'Y’,'N’);
mysql> flush privileges;
or
mysql> grant all privileges on databasename.* to username@localhost;
mysql> flush privileges;
To update info already in a table.
mysql> UPDATE [table name] SET Select_priv = ‘Y’,Insert_priv = ‘Y’,Update_priv = ‘Y’ where [field name] = ‘user’;
Delete a row(s) from a table.
mysql> DELETE from [table name] where [field name] = ‘whatever’;
Update database permissions/privilages.
mysql> flush privileges;
Delete a column.
mysql> alter table [table name] drop column [column name];
Add a new column to db.
mysql> alter table [table name] add column [new column name] varchar (20);
Change column name.
mysql> alter table [table name] change [old column name] [new column name] varchar (50);
Make a unique column so you get no dupes.
mysql> alter table [table name] add unique ([column name]);
Make a column bigger.
mysql> alter table [table name] modify [column name] VARCHAR(3);
Delete unique from table.
mysql> alter table [table name] drop index [colmn name];
Load a CSV file into a table.
mysql> LOAD DATA INFILE ‘/tmp/filename.csv’ replace INTO TABLE [table name] FIELDS TERMINATED BY ‘,’ LINES TERMINATED BY ‘\n’ (field1,field2,field3);
Dump all databases for backup. Backup file is sql commands to recreate all db’s.
# [mysql dir]/bin/mysqldump -u root -ppassword –opt >/tmp/alldatabases.sql
Dump one database for backup.
# [mysql dir]/bin/mysqldump -u username -ppassword –databases databasename >/tmp/databasename.sql
Dump a table from a database.
# [mysql dir]/bin/mysqldump -c -u username -ppassword databasename tablename > /tmp/databasename.tablename.sql
Restore database (or database table) from backup.
# [mysql dir]/bin/mysql -u username -ppassword databasename < /tmp/databasename.sql
Create Table Example 1.
mysql> CREATE TABLE [table name] (firstname VARCHAR(20), middleinitial VARCHAR(3), lastname VARCHAR(35),suffix VARCHAR(3),officeid VARCHAR(10),userid VARCHAR(15),username VARCHAR(8),email VARCHAR(35),phone VARCHAR(25), groups VARCHAR(15),datestamp DATE,timestamp time,pgpemail VARCHAR(255));
Create Table Example 2.
mysql> create table [table name] (personid int(50) not null auto_increment primary key,firstname varchar(35),middlename varchar(50),lastnamevarchar(50) default ‘bato’);
MYSQL Statements and clauses
ALTER DATABASE
ALTER TABLE
ALTER VIEW
ANALYZE TABLE
BACKUP TABLE
CACHE INDEX
CHANGE MASTER TO
CHECK TABLE
CHECKSUM TABLE
COMMIT
CREATE DATABASE
CREATE INDEX
CREATE TABLE
CREATE VIEW
DELETE
DESCRIBE
DO
DROP DATABASE
DROP INDEX
DROP TABLE
DROP USER
DROP VIEW
EXPLAIN
FLUSH
GRANT
HANDLER
INSERT
JOIN
KILL
LOAD DATA FROM MASTER
LOAD DATA INFILE
LOAD INDEX INTO CACHE
LOAD TABLE...FROM MASTER
LOCK TABLES
OPTIMIZE TABLE
PURGE MASTER LOGS
RENAME TABLE
REPAIR TABLE
REPLACE
RESET
RESET MASTER
RESET SLAVE
RESTORE TABLE
REVOKE
ROLLBACK
ROLLBACK TO SAVEPOINT
SAVEPOINT
SELECT
SET
SET PASSWORD
SET SQL_LOG_BIN
SET TRANSACTION
SHOW BINLOG EVENTS
SHOW CHARACTER SET
SHOW COLLATION
SHOW COLUMNS
SHOW CREATE DATABASE
SHOW CREATE TABLE
SHOW CREATE VIEW
SHOW DATABASES
SHOW ENGINES
SHOW ERRORS
SHOW GRANTS
SHOW INDEX
SHOW INNODB STATUS
SHOW LOGS
SHOW MASTER LOGS
SHOW MASTER STATUS
SHOW PRIVILEGES
SHOW PROCESSLIST
SHOW SLAVE HOSTS
SHOW SLAVE STATUS
SHOW STATUS
SHOW TABLE STATUS
SHOW TABLES
SHOW VARIABLES
SHOW WARNINGS
START SLAVE
START TRANSACTION
STOP SLAVE
TRUNCATE TABLE
UNION
UNLOCK TABLES
USE
String Functions
AES_DECRYPT
AES_ENCRYPT
ASCII
BIN
BINARY
BIT_LENGTH
CHAR
CHAR_LENGTH
CHARACTER_LENGTH
COMPRESS
CONCAT
CONCAT_WS
CONV
DECODE
DES_DECRYPT
DES_ENCRYPT
ELT
ENCODE
ENCRYPT
EXPORT_SET
FIELD
FIND_IN_SET
HEX
INET_ATON
INET_NTOA
INSERT
INSTR
LCASE
LEFT
LENGTH
LOAD_FILE
LOCATE
LOWER
LPAD
LTRIM
MAKE_SET
MATCH AGAINST
MD5
MID
OCT
OCTET_LENGTH
OLD_PASSWORD
ORD
PASSWORD
POSITION
QUOTE
REPEAT
REPLACE
REVERSE
RIGHT
RPAD
RTRIM
SHA
SHA1
SOUNDEX
SPACE
STRCMP
SUBSTRING
SUBSTRING_INDEX
TRIM
UCASE
UNCOMPRESS
UNCOMPRESSED_LENGTH
UNHEX
UPPER
Date and Time Functions
ADDDATE
ADDTIME
CONVERT_TZ
CURDATE
CURRENT_DATE
CURRENT_TIME
CURRENT_TIMESTAMP
CURTIME
DATE
DATE_ADD
DATE_FORMAT
DATE_SUB
DATEDIFF
DAY
DAYNAME
DAYOFMONTH
DAYOFWEEK
DAYOFYEAR
EXTRACT
FROM_DAYS
FROM_UNIXTIME
GET_FORMAT
HOUR
LAST_DAY
LOCALTIME
LOCALTIMESTAMP
MAKEDATE
MAKETIME
MICROSECOND
MINUTE
MONTH
MONTHNAME
NOW
PERIOD_ADD
PERIOD_DIFF
QUARTER
SEC_TO_TIME
SECOND
STR_TO_DATE
SUBDATE
SUBTIME
SYSDATE
TIME
TIMEDIFF
TIMESTAMP
TIMESTAMPDIFF
TIMESTAMPADD
TIME_FORMAT
TIME_TO_SEC
TO_DAYS
UNIX_TIMESTAMP
UTC_DATE
UTC_TIME
UTC_TIMESTAMP
WEEK
WEEKDAY
WEEKOFYEAR
YEAR
YEARWEEK
Mathematical and Aggregate Functions
ABS
ACOS
ASIN
ATAN
ATAN2
AVG
BIT_AND
BIT_OR
BIT_XOR
CEIL
CEILING
COS
COT
COUNT
CRC32
DEGREES
EXP
FLOOR
FORMAT
GREATEST
GROUP_CONCAT
LEAST
LN
LOG
LOG2
LOG10
MAX
MIN
MOD
PI
POW
POWER
RADIANS
RAND
ROUND
SIGN
SIN
SQRT
STD
STDDEV
SUM
TAN
TRUNCATE
VARIANCE
Flow Control Functions
CASE
IF
IFNULL
NULLIF
Command-Line Utilities
comp_err
isamchk
make_binary_distribution
msql2mysql
my_print_defaults
myisamchk
myisamlog
myisampack
mysqlaccess
mysqladmin
mysqlbinlog
mysqlbug
mysqlcheck
mysqldump
mysqldumpslow
mysqlhotcopy
mysqlimport
mysqlshow
perror
Perl API – using functions and methods built into the Perl DBI with MySQL
available_drivers
begin_work
bind_col
bind_columns
bind_param
bind_param_array
bind_param_inout
can
clone
column_info
commit
connect
connect_cached
data_sources
disconnect
do
dump_results
err
errstr
execute
execute_array
execute_for_fetch
fetch
fetchall_arrayref
fetchall_hashref
fetchrow_array
fetchrow_arrayref
fetchrow_hashref
finish
foreign_key_info
func
get_info
installed_versions
last_insert_id
looks_like_number
neat
neat_list
parse_dsn
parse_trace_flag
parse_trace_flags
ping
prepare
prepare_cached
primary_key
primary_key_info
quote
quote_identifier
rollback
rows
selectall_arrayref
selectall_hashref
selectcol_arrayref
selectrow_array
selectrow_arrayref
selectrow_hashref
set_err
state
table_info
table_info_all
tables
trace
trace_msg
type_info
type_info_all
Attributes for Handles
PHP API – using functions built into PHP with MySQL
mysql_affected_rows
mysql_change_user
mysql_client_encoding
mysql_close
mysql_connect
mysql_create_db
mysql_data_seek
mysql_db_name
mysql_db_query
mysql_drop_db
mysql_errno
mysql_error
mysql_escape_string
mysql_fetch_array
mysql_fetch_assoc
mysql_fetch_field
mysql_fetch_lengths
mysql_fetch_object
mysql_fetch_row
mysql_field_flags
mysql_field_len
mysql_field_name
mysql_field_seek
mysql_field_table
mysql_field_type
mysql_free_result
mysql_get_client_info
mysql_get_host_info
mysql_get_proto_info
mysql_get_server_info
mysql_info
mysql_insert_id
mysql_list_dbs
mysql_list_fields
mysql_list_processes
mysql_list_tables
mysql_num_fields
mysql_num_rows
mysql_pconnect
mysql_ping
mysql_query
mysql_real_escape_string
mysql_result
mysql_select_db
mysql_stat
mysql_tablename
mysql_thread_id
mysql_unbuffered_query
