Assignment tips & expectations:
- Remember that a stock is something that we have varying levels of, and that we manage as it’s level rises and falls. That definition is both flexible and ambiguous to allow you to explore the conceptual area of your company and economic sector. There’s no absolutely correct set of stocks, but the better sets will be those that guide you toward a better understanding of the company and its economic sector.
- The stocks you define in your analysis should provide for a comprehensive coverage of the major things that flow through and are managed by any company in your chosen economic sector. The written explanation of each stock in the chapter should utilize the Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) so that the completed chapter will lay out an effective description for understanding all of the major Continuants and Occurrents in your company and economic sector.
- The level of detail in your stock-and-flow diagrams should be roughly equivalent to the examples in the Introduction to Stock & Flow video on the u02v1 page – showing significant flows into and out of each major stock. Additional detail and annotation is welcome, but is not required.
- Each individual diagram you develop should be included in your submitted Word document as a figure in the required chapter with effective text documenting and explaining what you have done. The chapter should have a coherence, and not just be a series of diagrams.
Subject Areas & Data Sources
- Rethink the stock-and-flow analysis from u04p1. Generally, the stock-and-flow analysis that everyone turned in for u04p1 was superficial. The goal was to identify all of the stocks that would be needed to completely understand the company and its economic sector. Many students limited the analysis to only the obvious stocks around the company’s primary products or services. Omitted were major swaths of the company and its data. The u07p1 submission requires that you include an updated Stocks & Flows chapter, and you’ll probably find that you need a significant expansion and update to cover all of the data that is needed for the subject areas.
- Tell the story using the BFO (Chapter 4, Figures 4.12-15). If you go back to the end of Chapter 4 in Biehl (2016), you’ll find the figures that tell the story of healthcare in terms of Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) constructs. Steps a-h go from basic modeling basic time and space through the steps needed to understand the business in terms of its major factual events and transactions. Your Subject Areas should tell that story for YOUR industry in similar fashion (although you don’t need to include the complex diagrams).
- BFO Detailed Analysis. Your discussion/write-up of subject areas should “connect the dots” in your thinking about your organization, your economic sector, and the data in a potential data warehouse that will be used to control management of the organization. Stocks are analyzed as Continuants which eventually get represented as warehouse Dimensions (in u09p1 in Unit 9). Flows (in and out of your Stocks) as analyzed as Occurrents which eventually get represented as warehouse Facts (in u09p1 in Unit 9).
- Dimension Design Pattern (Chapter 5). As you analyze your subject areas, you should be able to identify – preliminary at this point – facts that you’ll want in your warehouse that might take advantage of some of the features of the warehouse dimension design pattern. For Bridges & Groups, try to identify elements that are needed more than once for a fact. For Hierarchy, look for relationships among elements in a single domain. For Context & Reference, look for situations where you might have different sources identify something using different keys (i.e. synonyms)
- Write-up Subject Areas. Subject areas are not dimensions exclusively, or facts exclusively. They are sets of information that it makes sense to write-up and discuss together. A company or sector typically requires dozens of subject areas for complete coverage, although eight or so often provide coverage of keys areas. The final number depends on whether you tend to lump a lot of things together (getting fewer subject areas) or tend to split them up (resulting in more subject areas). The key criterion isn’t the number of subject areas, but their effectiveness at describing all of the information needed to completely understand the company and its economic sector. Any question someone might ask should be answerable using information in and across your subject areas.
- Data Sources. Describe the data sources the organization has or might have for populating the data in the subject areas into your data warehouse. These sources should be realistic and detailed. Do research on what information systems are typically available in your company and sector. At Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York, the warehouse described in our readings is updated every night with the data from 120 different information system. Do some research to try to determine the fullest list you can for your company and sector. Describe the sources in your chapter, and explain how they map to, or cover your subject areas. Note: Identifying data source usually results in learning new information that then requires updating your subject area write-ups.
This assignment requires significant analysis and detail in the write-up. Definitely apply MAJOR updates to your Stocks & Flows chapter. Start your Subject Areas & Data Sources chapter with your BFO story and analysis, followed by major sub-headings for you major Subject Areas, and finally include your description of your identified Data Sources. It’ll be a big chapter, and should align with what you’ve done in the earlier Stocks & Flows chapter. The expectation is that you will include detailed and well-written analysis suitable for a graduate-level masters course.
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