Saturday | 10 January, 2009
CIO
Show Me The Numbers
While no business presentation is complete without its plethora of charts and graphics, very few people understand how truly meaningless numbers are unless their significance is clearly understood and they are effectively communicated to the people who rely on them for decision making.
Sue Bushell 05 April, 2006 16:17:48

Role of Standards

People designing tables and graphs face a multitude of choices: some good, some bad, some best and some simply a matter of preference among equally good choices. By developing and following standards for the visual design of quantitative information, you can eliminate all but the best choices once and for all, Few says, and dramatically cut the time it takes to produce tables and graphs.

Here are some of the qualities that design standards for tables and graphs should exhibit. They should:

• grow out of real needs and never grow beyond them

• represent the most effective design practices

• have effective communication as their primary objective

• evolve freely as conditions change or new insights are gained

• be easy to learn

• save time

• be applied to the software that is used to produce tables and graphs in the form of specific instructions and design templates

• never inhibit creativity that actually improves communication.

Whatever you do is worth doing well, Few says. Give a clear voice to the numbers that tell the story of your business and clear visibility to the opportunities those numbers reveal. Produce tables and graphs that communicate.

Additional Resources
Featured Whitepaper Sponsors
Market Place
 

Smart SOA World Tour

Discover how SOA can create smarter outcomes for your business.

Attend and learn:

  • How SOA is helping leading companies to become more agile
  • Where you should be applying SOA processes in your company
  • The top SOA implementation mistakes to avoid

Click here for more information.
  • +

    CIO Live Podcast #79: Brent D Taylor, author of The Outsider's Edge: The Making of Self-Made Billionaires Part II 05 October, 2007 06:00:00

    For his new book, The Outsider's Edge: The Making of Self-Made Billionaires, social researcher Brent D Taylor spent four years of intensive research investigating the psychological make-up and backgrounds of some of the world's richest men and women, including IT luminaries Bill Gates, Larry Ellison and Steve Jobs. Taylor discovered that, despite working in different industries and coming from different upbringings, they all have one thing in common -- they are all outsiders.
  • +

    CIO Live Podcast #78: Brent D Taylor, author of The Outsider's Edge: The Making of Self-Made Billionaires 28 September, 2007 17:34:25

    For his new book, The Outsider's Edge: The Making of Self-Made Billionaires, social researcher Brent D Taylor spent four years of intensive research investigating the psychological make-up and backgrounds of some of the world's richest men and women, including IT luminaries Bill Gates, Larry Ellison and Steve Jobs. Taylor discovered that, despite working in different industries and coming from different upbringings, they all have one thing in common -- they are all outsiders.
  • +

    CIO Live Podcast #77: Panasonic Speeds Up Trans-Pacific File Transfers, Part III 21 September, 2007 07:00:00

    Part three in our three-part special report from CIO's sister publication Network World in the US, as Paul Desmond reports from the Network World IT Roadmap Conference in Santa Clara, California. With development teams in the US and Japan, Panasonic needed a more efficient way to move very large files between the two locations. Iben Rodriguez, IT consultant for Panasonic Research and Development, explains how a storage-area network and virtual server technology helped speed up WAN performance.
  • +

    CIO Live Podcast #76: Panasonic Speeds Up Trans-Pacific File Transfers, Part II 14 September, 2007 07:00:00

    Part two in our three-part special report from CIO's sister publication Network World in the US, as Paul Desmond reports from the Network World IT Roadmap Conference in Santa Clara, California. With development teams in the US and Japan, Panasonic needed a more efficient way to move very large files between the two locations. Iben Rodriguez, IT consultant for Panasonic Research and Development, explains how a storage-area network and virtual server technology helped speed up WAN performance.
  • +

    CIO Live Podcast #75: Panasonic Speeds Up Trans-Pacific File Transfers, Part I 07 September, 2007 07:00:05

    Part one in our three-part special report from CIO's sister publication Network World in the US, as Paul Desmond reports from the Network World IT Roadmap Conference in Santa Clara, California. With development teams in the US and Japan, Panasonic needed a more efficient way to move very large files between the two locations. Iben Rodriguez, IT consultant for Panasonic Research and Development, explains how a storage-area network and virtual server technology helped speed up WAN performance.
  • +

    TJX Maxx hacker banged up for 30 years 09 January, 2009 11:26:00

    Key figure in the infamous TJX Maxx Wi-Fi hack of 2005 has been sentenced to 30-years in prison by a Turkish court.
    Maksym Yastremskiy, the Ukrainian accused of being a key figure in the infamous TJX Maxx Wi-Fi hack of 2005, has been sentenced to 30-years in prison by a Turkish court.
  • +

    Data breaches rose sharply in 2008, says study 08 January, 2009 08:27:00

    More than 35 million data records were breached in 2008, according to the Identity Theft Resource Center.
    More than 35 million data records were breached in 2008 in the U.S., a figure that underscores continuing difficulties in securing information, according to the Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC).
  • +

    Rogue SSL certificate exploit puts VeriSign on the spot 07 January, 2009 11:04:00

    Wishes "white hat" researchers had notified VeriSign before public demo.
    Following the success of researchers last week in creating a false SSL certificate based on VeriSign's RapidSSL brand, the company is scrambling to explain how it happened, how it's preventing it from reoccurring, and whether its other SSL certificate-generation services are at risk.
  • +

    With Gaza conflict, cyberattacks come too 05 January, 2009 08:03:00

    Pro-Palestinian hackers have defaced thousands of sites following attacks in Gaza.
    The conflict raging in Gaza between Israel and Palestine has spilled over to the Internet.
  • +

    5 ways to secure your Blackberry 18 December, 2008 12:58:00

    What do Tom Cruise and the McCain campaign have in common? They have both been bitten by the loss of a Blackberry. Mobile expert Dan Hoffman gives advice on how to keep your cherished mobile device safe, even if it's out of your hands
    What do Tom Cruise and the McCain campaign have in common? They have both been bitten by the loss of a Blackberry. Mobile expert Dan Hoffman gives advice on how to keep your cherished mobile device safe, even if it's out of your hands.
CIO Webcast Innovation #8 - What are the biggest roadblocks to IT's involvement in innovation at your company?
Watch the latest latest edition of CIO Innovation which is now available for download.
Watch the webcast
Sign up to the CIO Innovation update email


CIO Live Podcast #79: Brent D Taylor, author of The Outsider's Edge: The Making of Self-Made Billionaires Part II
Listen to the latest edition of CIO Live which is now available for download.
Listen to the podcast
Sign up to the CIO Live email
Whitepaper

Gaining Competitive Advantage Through Enterprise Planning

No matter how good its products or innovative its services, no organization can perform to its full potential without an adequate planning structure in place. Discover how this can be done by reading on.