Top Five Ways to Advance Agile BI

The need for management to receive timely information has steadily increased during the last few years, according to a study conducted by the Aberdeen Group.

As the trend continues, IT departments will be subject to increasingly tighter decision-making windows and they’ll struggle to deliver data with greater speed and increased accuracy.

Referencing a compilation of studies, the Aberdeen Group reports that 42% of decision makers participating in the agile business intelligence research need data within one day of the event, 10% within the hour and 18% within minutes.

That means 70% of organizations expect information to be made available within the first 24 hours of an event. The shrinking decision windows may force other organizations to consider an agile BI approach in order to meet the demands of business leaders.

In prior research projects, Aberdeen has defined agile BI as “BI that can rapidly and cost effectively adapt to meet changing business needs.” This allows managers to access information quickly even as new data sources become available, modifications to the data manipulation process are applied, and additional data capture strategies are implemented.

The keys to employing an agile BI model are:

1. Develop a first class training program, ensure that the user community learns how to use the BI system and have the skills needed to manipulate data. Training should be both formal (class room, webinars, videos, etc.) and informal (placing users with BI skills closer to the points where they’re needed). Monitor the training to ensure end users are acquiring the knowledge to effectively navigate the BI system;
2. Increase the availability of operational data. Develop an ODS (operational data store) giving users access to data on a real- or near real-time basis. Update this data set frequently and clearly delineate the update frequencies and how this data is different from the data housed in the data warehouse;
3. Monitor the cost to develop the BI system and track against the planned BI development budget. Include all costs such as licensing, deployment, testing, labor, etc. Then monitor the cost to maintain the BI system and show how the BI system contributes to the organization’s bottom line;
4. Document everything. Document current data sources and possible data sources. Document how data is collected and processed. Document how metrics are derived. Meet with end users to gather and document requirements and then meet again to document if and/or how the BI system is meeting or not meeting the organization’s needs. Develop benchmarks along the way and document and plan for improvement. Make the documents available to everyone, allowing for the quick transfer of knowledge and the identification of best practices;
5. Reports and charts should be fully interactive, allowing for drills both up and down. Users should be able to immediately dig deep into the data and search for patterns.

Dennis Earl Hardy
Spotfire Blogging Team