Sometimes when you want answers to important questions you have to ask the people who’ve been there, done that.
And that’s exactly what Michael Schmier did when he wanted the answer to this question: What are your three tips for implementing an agile BI strategy?
Schmier, a product, marketing, and customer experience professional, asked his question on Focus.com, a business professional social network whose members offer advice on a variety of business and IT subjects.
Let’s take a look at some of the responses:
John Wilson VP, AIG/Chartis Insurance, said the three key elements to successful agile BI are:
- A close working cooperation between business and IT – to ensure that everyone has a clear understanding of the needs, wants, and desires. It also means the entire team – the business and IT – can be held accountable for the results.
- A dedicated group of developers and business representatives – to enable rapid development. A dedicated team also allows you to maintain an uninterrupted pace of development as well as deliver timely solutions.
- Simplicity of design of the solution – to enable the quick, accurate, and workable delivery of the desired solution and to ensure that it can handle ever-changing business requirements.
Here are three tips from computer industry analyst Wayne Kernochan (@wkernochan):
- Start with truly agile new product development. Accept no substitutes.
- Focus first on business processes. And only second on decision makers.
- Make the data and analysis cross existing organizational and firm lines.
From Dan Linstedt, President, Empowered Holdings LLC, we have:
- Start with the business pain points. What are the top 10 business problems that BI/analytics can solve? And determine the timeline for delivery, which in agile should be “yesterday.”
- Apply a standards-based, repeatable methodology. That means one that has been fine tuned for delivery and implementation. And one that has had nearly all its implementation and architecture processes optimized. Be sure that both the architecture and the methodology are “scalable.”
- Find the right team of seasoned IT professionals. However, you have to ensure that this team understands the business side of the house as well as IT. And no divas need apply. You have to ensure that all these IT pros are team players who can work together. That also means everyone on the team has to be accountable for his work, and measured on his progress.
“Agility (in my mind) doesn’t mean just producing quickly, but it also means the ability to produce quality work, repeatable work, measurable work, and of course – after delivery – the ability to go back and optimize the processes that need it,” Linstedt says.
Next Steps:
- Participate in Aberdeen Group’s Agile Business Intelligence 2012 benchmark study. This research report by Aberdeen Senior Analyst David White will allow your organization to benchmark its use of business intelligence (BI) against your peers, and understand how to make your BI solution more responsive to changing business needs. To thank you for taking the time to answer this survey, we’ll provide you with a complimentary copy of the report, which is expected to be available in June 2012. When you complete the survey, you’ll be directed to another web page where you can download a complimentary copy of the recent report: Embedded BI: Boosting Analytical Adoption and Engagement.
- Download our complimentary “5-Minute Guide to Business Analytics” and learn how analytics technologies can help you uncover the most relevant data when you need it.
Linda Rosencrance
Spotfire Blogging Team
