Understanding Projects

Data analytics is providing the competitive edge in business today and though many organizations begin with a single initiative, they often increase the number of projects overtime as they see the results that can come from digital transformation. As every new project begins, new requirements in terms of data, personnel, and deliverables arise. To help teams manage different projects within an organization, Aunsight provides project management features that enable everything that takes place within Aunsight to be managed as part of a project, and to share objects like datasets and workflows between projects.

Aunsight projects are separately governed spaces within an organization where project-specific objects and data can be created, stored, and managed. Projects and organizations are both examples of context, that is, a space where objects and data are owned and controlled according to rules. But since there is a hierarchical relationship between an organization and its projects, some of the rules in organizations can directly impact every project under that organization in a "global" fashion. While it is possible to create an Aunsight organization with all resources governed at the organization level, in practice this is less than ideal, since it requires a single access model to apply to all resources. Dividing resources into discrete projects enables data segregation and enhanced security.

Shaping the Context for Data Governance

Creating projects provides a way to create new spaces for organizing work in Aunsight and managing the team that works in that project. Because each project is different, and may involve data with unique security and privacy concerns, every project needs a separate set of rules: team membership, roles, and groups. Creating rules for these spaces requires careful forethought and planning.

The first step in project management is to create a new project in the projects workspace. The second step for most organizations will be to manage project membership. Usually this involves delegating responsibility to a team leader by creating a team leader role and adding someone to it. Whether or not there is a direct leader, every new project will require planning to determine the other roles and groups that will need to be defined in that project. Project leaders will also want to continuously monitor membership in the group.

Developing and Sharing in Projects

Once a team has begun working in a project, everything created within that context is "owned" by that context. Objects owned by a project are completely secure from any access by members of other organizations. These objects are even invisible at the organization level to members who do not have permission to see those objects at that level. As a result, data can be kept secure from members who only have permissions within the project level.

Sometimes data or objects in Aunsight are useful to members of other teams. For example, a dataset with product information may need to be shared with members of other teams working on different projects. Aunsight objects can be shared between contexts using a sharing tool that can usually be accessed from the "Context" section of the details tab of an object's record.