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DBAs do you always get it right?

Apr 18, 2019



Book review of: ‘The Right It: Why So Many Ideas Fail and How to Make Sure Yours Succeed’ by Alberto Savoia and published Feburary 2019. Savoia is known as a serial entrepreneur, angel-investor and an expert in lean innovation.

An interesting read on the Lean Startup method. Savoia presents useful advice and techniques to empower you to start any product or service confidently. It’s a great guidebook for budding entrepreneurs and C-Level executives.

Here’s some chapter, sub-chapter and section titles that ought to make you want to read this book for details:

  • Failure is not and option- Not!
  • Too smart to fail?
  • The right IT
  • The wrong IT
  • Data beats opinion
  • Other people’s data
  • You must get your own data (YODA)
  • Say it with numbers
  • Pretotypying
  • The skin in the game caliper
  • Tactics Toolkit
  • Testing now beats testing later
  • Time to test
  • Analyzing and iterating

So whats it got to do with DBAs? Right?

It all comes down to the data. Your own data and numbers and testing. Data that can make or break getting a new product or service launched.

DBAs need to rethink how to best collect, organize and present prototype data because it is such a critical piece to business decisions. Savoia elaborates a practical theory of data collection in the book.

If you could hit a home run just 1 out of 10 at bats you would be the Home Run Percentage All Time Leader. ‘The Right It’ might get you a better success rate then 10 percent on your ideas. As Savoia says, the guiding principle of the book is “make sure you are building The Right It before you build it right”.

Thumbs up for the book ‘The Right It’!