• Embed Doc
  • Copy Link
  • Readcast
  • Collections
  • CommentGo Back
Download
 
 
Improving ROI and success rateof your Business Intelligenceproject using an AGILE iterativeand incremental approach
By Martin Proulx and Dominic Danis
 
About the authors
Over the years and currently as Vice-President, Agile Business Intelligence atPyxis Technologies,Martin Proulxhassuccessfully participated in severalprojects with companies from thepharmaceutical, retail, financial, andmanufacturing sectors.Martinholds aMaster's degree in managementsciences and a Bachelor of BusinessAdministration from HEC Montreal. Hecumulates over 15 years of experiencein: software development projectmanagement, business processoptimization, and dashboards and keyperformance indicators (KPIs).Dominic Daniscumulates over 10 yearsof experience in software developmentand BI project management. In aneffort to use a better approach tosoftware developmentDominichasbeen using Agile and Scrum since 2005.He is a Certified Scrum Master and hesuccessfully applies this approach toBusiness Intelligence projects. Dominicis currently Principal, Agile BusinessIntelligence at Pyxis Technologies.
About Pyxis Technologies
 Pyxis is the name of the constellationof the compass and as such Pyxis actsas beacon for companies seeking toimprove their ways of doing softwaredevelopment.Pyxis was founded in 2000 as the resultof reflection of engineers in computerscience questioning the traditionalapproaches to software development.
Executive Summary
Business intelligence (BI) applications are increasingly popular andorganizations of all sizes are seeing the benefits. As aconsequence, BI applications are no longer limited to seniorexecutive but are increasingly deployed throughout departmentsand levels. The timely completion and successful implementationof BI projects provides a competitive advantage to the adoptingorganizations. Unfortunately, there are more failures anddisappointments than successes.It is generally accepted that other pre-requisites such as: ensuringexecutive support, aligning business and IT strategies or selectingthe appropriate technology platform are critical to the success of BI projects. In addition to these requirements, we believe that anAGILE iterative and incremental development approach combinedwith light weight project management principles, such as SCRUM,greatly improve this track record. In addition, since thedevelopment approach and project management techniques aremostly under the control of the information technology (IT)executive, they can more easily be altered in order to deliverbetter results to the organization.Our approach relies on simple and straightforward principles.Through short cycles of definition, planning, building, presenting,and retrospecting, the development team iteratively deliversvalue and incrementally adds components to each other toachieve a complete BI application. As long as the developmentteam focuses on highest value KPIs, building them from beginningto end incrementally and routinely demonstrating their work todecision makers for feedback, they will remain focused.Our objective is to increase the ROI of the BI initiatives by:
 
Reducing the initial investment required to launch a BIproject by quickly delivering tangible components to thebusiness users instead of heavily investing upfront inarchitecture and modelling costs.
 
Accelerating the availability of the information by using an
 
 
Copyright © 2009 Pyxis Technologieswww.pyxis-tech.com
2
Improving ROI and success rate of your business intelligence project through an iterative and incremental approach
 
Their questioning led them to adoptnew approaches to softwaredevelopment project management andto improve their processes andpractices.
 incremental approach to present high level indicators atfirst and refining the requirements towards more granularinformation.
 
Delivering the right solutions to the business users byworking iteratively with them to fully understand therequirements.
 
Prioritizing the work so the requirements with the highestvalue and ROI are addressed first, thereby continuouslydelivering values to the organization.
Track record of BI projects
There was a running gag in an organization we were working with that every Business Intelligence (BI)
1
 project required 3 years to complete and would cost over $3 Million. This running gag demonstrated anunfortunate situation
 –
most BI projects are expensive, time and resource consuming and have a lowrate of success. Along these lines, very few people would debate that traditional BI projects requireheavy investments and result in long delays before providing value to the organization.Much has already been said about the importance of BI applications in organizations. One of the mostobvious and frequently repeated benefits of BI applications is the ability to increase the quality andtimeliness of the business decisions being made. This is increasingly true as BI applications are beingdemocratized and are now embedded in the decision making process at every level of the organizationand across multiple departments.In addition, decision makers constantly need an in-
depth understanding of their business’
strengths andweaknesses and this is especially true during difficult economic times. The availability of timely andaccurate information can help business leaders make the right decisions. Along these lines, the survey of over 1,500 CIOs conducted by Gartner EXP
2
shows that despite predicted flat IT budget growth in 2009,BI projects remain their number one technology priority.There isn
’t much
need to emphasize further the value of early diagnosis and the implementation of timely solutions but in a changing business environment the business needs evolve too quickly forsequential waterfall development methodologies such as the one presented in the following diagram.
1
Within the context of this white paper and for simplicity, we combine Data Warehouse (DW) projects withBusiness Intelligence (BI) projects.
2
 http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=855612 
 
 
Copyright © 2009 Pyxis Technologieswww.pyxis-tech.com
3
Improving ROI and success rate of your business intelligence project through an iterative and incremental approach
 
Case in point, it is estimated that 60%
3
of BI projects end in abandonment or failure and market dataconfirms that out of the 3 standard project dimensions
 –
time, resources, and scope
 –
timelines andresources typically exceed the initial plan while scope consistently fall short of the original expectationsand requirements. As such, an approach that delivers value early in the project while remaining alignedwith the business priorities is recommended.In addition, estimates show that no more than 20%
4
of business users actually use their BI applicationsproactively and that a staggering 64%
5
of systems functionalities are rarely or never used. Thisregrettable situation compelled us to look for an alternate and improved approach to ensure BI projectshave greater success rate. More specifically that BI projects deliver the features required by businessusers (scope) in a timely fashion (time) while controlling expenses (budget).Our intent is neither to rehash the unfortunate track record of BI projects nor to highlight the mostdramatic failures but to propose a different approach to the development of BI projects.This is a tall order but with the increasing popularity of AGILE iterative and incremental approaches andwith repeated success in other specialities; we know using such an approach in the development of BIprojects leads to much better outcomes.
 An iterative and incremental approach for BI projects
The unimpressive track record in the development of BI applications led us to conceive an improvedapproach to reduce the initial investment to launch a BI project and to modify the requirement
3
Business Intelligence Roadmap, Moss and Atre, 2003
4
Business Intelligence Summit by Gartner, 2008
5
 
Standish Group Study Reported at XP2002 by Jim Johnson
 
of 00

Leave a Comment

You must be to leave a comment.
Submit
Characters: ...
You must be to leave a comment.
Submit
Characters: ...