Diablogue: The final four truths.
Writing by Jorgen on Thursday, 6 of December , 2007 at 12:47 pm
This is the second part of my posts about the ‘universal truths in business intelligence’. Check out what Frank Buytendijk thinks at: http://blogs.oracle.com/frankbuytendijk/2007/12/04#a954. BI projects need high level sponsorship. The reason for this is that we want to introduce Business Intelligence in the organization. It is all about creating awareness and enthusiasm. So do we really need a high level sponsor or manager for this? Perhaps in a very rigid hierarchic organization you do. But we Dutch do not deal well with a top down approach. The real innovation comes from the work floor, we think. I think organization can benefit much more from a highly committed thought leader.3. BI development should be done incrementally. What would be the opposite of that? Probably some kind of big bang approach where all the functionality can be delivered in one single release. That sounds nice but often this is not possible for BI. To start with I find that when users start to interact with the new BI system they come up with new insights followed by change requests. A successful incremental approach focuses on the identification and prioritization of the most beneficial increments or slices. This should be based on the priority of the objective (is this a key process, is it in line with our strategy?). Other qualifying criteria can be availability and quality of the data. Each slice should be a complete solution. BI projects – just as in real life – should have a first things first approach. Delivering incrementally – keeping the long term view in mind – allows for faster speed to value. So I agree with this truth. 2. BI projects require a business driven approach. Any BI project or program should have business value. Creating a business intelligence environment without a goal is a mission impossible. We do not need data warehouse projects. We need project that can create more sales or reduce churn. A data warehouse or business intelligence project can support this goal. However I do not think that it is should necessarily be the business user who initiates such a project. IT can play an important role in taking the lead by showing what is possible. Especially by creating a prototype. See also my other post on IT push or pull (http://www.biguru-online.com/2007/12/04/active-push-or-passive-pull-role-for-it/). 1. BI needs one version of the truth? Has anyone of you ever played bullshit bingo? It was one of the sources of inspiration for this post. You take 10 of the most used words and cross them out during a meeting when used. Single version would be on the top of that list. I hope that from this day forward no one will ever use this expression again. This was born out of fear for multiple version in spreadsheets across organization. And frankly, I cannot stand the expression anymore. Also I totally disagree with it. Understanding is always determined by its context! And all communication should differ for each target group. Creating a single version – let alone the office politics involved in that – is an utopia. Instead let us focus on a single version of the facts (data quality, lineage and so on). To me the focus should be on the definitions or meta data. As long as the definition is clear you can have different version per context.
Category: BI Thoughts, Business Intelligence consulting, Business Intelligence datawarehousing, Business Intelligence solution, Business Intelligence strategy
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