Moss L.T., Atre S. Business intelligence roadmap: The complete project lifecycle for decision-support applications
Подождите немного. Документ загружается.
Web developer(s)
Designing the Web site and creating the Web pages for
displaying reports and queries on the intranet, extranet,
or Internet
Web master
Setting up the Web server and Web security
Mutually exclusive roles, which should never be assigned to the same person, are:
Developer (of any type) and tester: A developer testing his or her own
programs is like the fox guarding the henhouse. Even if the developer were
motivated to break his or her own code, it is unlikely that he or she would think
of all the possible test cases and carry out an objective test plan. However, a
developer can take on the role of a tester for another developer's programs, as
done in peer reviews and integration testing.
Additional Limited Roles
Other roles participate on the BI project on a limited, as-needed basis.
Data owners are the major stakeholders in any BI initiative. They are
responsible for the quality of business data under their ownership and for
validating the business meta data.
The facilitator is a third-party participant during post-implementation reviews.
His or her responsibility is to lead the review meetings.
The scribe is also a third-party participant during post-implementation reviews.
He or she is responsible for taking notes and documenting the meeting minutes
and the resulting action items.
The BI Arbitration Board
The discussion on roles and responsibilities cannot end without mention of the BI
arbitration board. On cross-organizational BI projects, technical as well as business
disputes will arise that neither the core team nor the extended team will be able to
resolve. A dispute resolution procedure should be established with guidelines for
handling these types of disputes. If a resolution cannot be achieved through other
prescribed means, the project team must have access to a body of executives with
the authority to be the tiebreaker. This body of executives is the BI arbitration board,
sometimes known as the BI steering committee.
BI arbitration boards can be organized in a variety of ways. A BI arbitration board
can be a newly created group whose members include the business sponsor, the
chief technology/information officer (CTO/CIO), IT managers, the chief operating
officer (COO), the chief financial officer (CFO), and line-of-business managers. In
some smaller organizations, even the chief executive officer (CEO) could be a
member of this board.
In other organizations, the BI arbitration board can be an existing committee. Most
organizations already have some official or unofficial executive committee. For
example, the CTO/CIO typically meets monthly with the employees who report
北斗成功社区 BeiDouWeb.com 教育音视频/电子书/实用资料文档/励志音乐影视 仅供免费试用/版权原著所有
51/631
directly to him or her, and the CEO typically meets monthly with line-of-business
executives, the CFO, and the COO. If a separate BI arbitration board cannot be
established, then the BI project teams must have access to the existing executive
committees.
[ Team LiB ]
北斗成功社区 BeiDouWeb.com 教育音视频/电子书/实用资料文档/励志音乐影视 仅供免费试用/版权原著所有
52/631
[ Team LiB ]
Justification for Using This Project Lifecycle
Guide
It has been said in the industry that "a paper airplane can be constructed with little
forethought, but a jet airplane cannot." Similarly, a stand-alone system that has only
a handful of business people using it can get by without a set of carefully planned
and executed project activities, but a cross-organizational BI initiative certainly
cannot.
As the BI decision-support environment evolves over time, it is imperative that a
strong foundation exists to support such expansion. To build a strong foundation,
many things have to be considered and many tasks have to be performed by many
people. It is irresponsible to casually "make up" who does what and when along the
way. That type of ad hoc development approach would put the organization's large
investment at risk and would pose an even bigger risk for losing business
opportunities. There are quite a few casualties in the trenches of lost opportunities!
The question is not whether or not a set of formalized guidelines must be used but
what type of guidelines to use. A waterfall methodology is not suitable for the
iterative releases of BI decision-support applications, but an agile and adaptive
development guide specifically geared toward BI decision-support applications is.
Business Intelligence Roadmap is such a guide.
[ Team LiB ]
北斗成功社区 BeiDouWeb.com 教育音视频/电子书/实用资料文档/励志音乐影视 仅供免费试用/版权原著所有
53/631
[ Team LiB ]
Bibliography and Additional Reading
Adelman, Sid, and Larissa Terpeluk Moss. Data Warehouse Project Management.
Boston, MA: Addison-Wesley, 2000.
Beck, Kent. Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change. Boston, MA:
Addison-Wesley, 2000.
Humphrey, Watts S. Winning with Software: An Executive Strategy. Boston, MA:
Addison-Wesley, 2002.
Inmon, William H., Claudia Imhoff, and Ryan Sousa. Corporate Information Factory.
New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1997.
Zachman, John. The Zachman Framework: A Primer for Enterprise Engineering and
Manufacturing. La Canada, CA: Zachman International, 2002.
DM Review: http://www.dmreview.com
Journal of Data Warehousing: http://www.dw-institute.com
Glossaries: http://www.techweb.com/encyclopedia and
http://www.ncits.org/tc_home/k5htm/ANSDIT.htm
[ Team LiB ]
北斗成功社区 BeiDouWeb.com 教育音视频/电子书/实用资料文档/励志音乐影视 仅供免费试用/版权原著所有
54/631
[ Team LiB ]
Chapter One. Step 1: Business Case
Assessment
北斗成功社区 BeiDouWeb.com 教育音视频/电子书/实用资料文档/励志音乐影视 仅供免费试用/版权原著所有
55/631
北斗成功社区 BeiDouWeb.com 教育音视频/电子书/实用资料文档/励志音乐影视 仅供免费试用/版权原著所有
56/631
Chapter Overview
This chapter covers the following topics:
Things to consider during a business case assessment
The importance of developing a business justification and a business strategy
for BI decision-support initiatives
Business drivers and strategic business goals, rather than new technology, as
the motivating forces behind every BI project
Business analysis issues such as defining the organization's information needs,
identifying data sources, and analyzing the current and desired quality of data
The use of cost-benefit analyses to demonstrate how (and how soon) a return
on investment (ROI) can be achieved
Risk assessment and the six major risk categories of technology, complexity,
integration, organization, project team, and financial investment
Brief descriptions of the activities involved in business case assessment, the
deliverables resulting from those activities, and the roles involved
The risks of not performing Step 1
Things to Consider
Access to Information
Where do we get the information we need for making decisions
today?
What information do we already have? What additional information
do we need?
Business Drivers and Sponsorship
What are the business drivers for an overall BI decision-support
initiative?
What are the specific business drivers for this BI application?
Who could be a potential business sponsor?
Do we already have a business sponsor for this BI application?
Readiness Assessment
Are we ready for a BI decision-support environment?
Have we performed a readiness assessment?
北斗成功社区 BeiDouWeb.com 教育音视频/电子书/实用资料文档/励志音乐影视 仅供免费试用/版权原著所有
57/631
What do we need to do to get ready? Buy hardware? Acquire tools?
Establish standards? Hire more staff?
Risks
What are the risks of building a BI decision-support environment?
What are the risks of not building a BI decision-support
environment?
Cost Justification
Is it worth building this BI application, or will it cost more than we
can justify?
Do we know what all the BI project costs will be?
Will we have to buy new hardware? Upgrade our network? Buy new
tools? Hire consultants?
Return on Investment
How will we measure ROI? For example:
Will the BI application have an effect on our customer service?
Will it help us increase customer satisfaction?
Will it help us increase our revenue?
Will it help us make strategic decisions that will lead to increased
profits?
Will it help us reduce our costs?
Can we expect to gain a bigger market share as a result of the BI
application?
Although BI has captured the imagination of many organizations, the industry is still
challenged to quantify benefits accurately, especially since an organization cannot
buy a BI product off the shelf and expect it to provide a complete solution to the
business needs. "Business intelligence," or intelligence about the business, is unique
to every organization, as are the policies and business rules governing the
organization's business practices. This uniqueness should be explored for competitive
advantage. Buying an off-the-shelf product, which was not built around the unique
features of an organization, reduces the likelihood for competitive advantage.
[ Team LiB ]
北斗成功社区 BeiDouWeb.com 教育音视频/电子书/实用资料文档/励志音乐影视 仅供免费试用/版权原著所有
58/631
[ Team LiB ]
Business Justification
Since it usually costs millions of dollars to create a BI environment, an organization
considering such an initiative needs a BI strategy and a business justification to show
the balance between the costs involved and the benefits gained. A BI decision-
support initiative provides numerous benefits—not only tangible benefits such as
increasing the sales volume but also intangible benefits such as enhancing the
organization's reputation. Many of these benefits, especially the intangible ones, are
difficult to quantify in terms of monetary value. Nevertheless, you should prepare an
itemized and detailed list of benefits in order to measure them against the high cost
of a BI implementation. Although the general benefits of BI decision-support
initiatives are documented widely, they cannot justify your BI initiative unless you
can associate these benefits to your organization's specific business problems and
strategic business goals.
Justification for a BI decision-support initiative must always be business-driven and
not technology-driven. It would not be wise to set up an expensive BI decision-
support environment only to experiment with new technology. Therefore, each
proposed BI application must reduce measurable "business pain" (problems affecting
the profitability or efficiency of an organization) in order to justify building the
application.
It is best to start the business justification process by identifying the organization's
strategic business goals. The BI decision-support initiative as a whole, and the
proposed BI application specifically, should support those strategic business goals.
This enables the ongoing viability of the BI decision-support environment. If BI
applications are built without a good business justification, management will most
likely not support the effort.
The business representative should be primarily responsible for determining the
business value of the proposed BI application. The information technology (IT)
department can become a solution partner with the business representative and can
help explore the business problems and define the potential benefits of the BI
application. IT can also help clarify and coordinate the different needs of the varied
groups of business people (knowledge workers, business analysts, business
executives). For example, there could be different requirements for:
Ease of use
Level of data granularity
Timeliness
Data quality
Security
Amount of external data
Historical requirements
Tool capabilities
北斗成功社区 BeiDouWeb.com 教育音视频/电子书/实用资料文档/励志音乐影视 仅供免费试用/版权原著所有
59/631
With the business representative leading the business case assessment effort, IT staff
can assist with the four business justification components (Figure 1.1).
Business drivers: Identify the business drivers, strategic business goals, and
BI application objectives. Ensure that the BI application objectives support the
strategic business goals.
Business analysis issues: Define the business analysis issues and the
information needed to meet the strategic business goals by stating the high-
level information requirements for the business.
Cost-benefit analysis: Estimate costs for building and maintaining a
successful BI decision-support environment. Determine the ROI by assigning
monetary value to the tangible benefits and highlighting the positive impact the
intangible benefits will have on the organization.
Risk assessment: Assess the risks in terms of technology, complexity,
integration, organization, project team, and financial investment.
Figure 1.1. Business Justification Components
The next four sections in this chapter explore each of these components.
[ Team LiB ]
北斗成功社区 BeiDouWeb.com 教育音视频/电子书/实用资料文档/励志音乐影视 仅供免费试用/版权原著所有
60/631