The 10 Truths about BI, Part II
Earlier in this blog, I wrote about Jorgen Heizenberg's listing of the 10 truths about BI. He first reported on the first six, and now on the top 4.
Here's the top 4, and my contributions to them...
4. BI projects need high level sponsorship
Jorgen argues this may be needed in a very hierarchical organization, but surely not everywhere? I agree with him. BI needs to be embedded in every business domain, and it needs to be part of every manager's daily job. Maybe it is needed to get BI started (as the business case sometimes is harder to make than -- say -- a general ledger), but the goal should be to make it sponsor-independent asap. Also because the initiative needs to survive if the sponsor moves on to a different job.
3. BI development should be done incrementally.
Jorgen argues what the opposite of that would be. Long sequential waterfall projects? With Jorgen, I simply agree with this truth.
2. BI projects require a business driven approach
The only approach more disastrous than the IT driven approach, is a business driven approach. Where an IT driven approach often leads to technical beauty, but not too many users (as has been established many many times in the last 20 years, this is hardly controversial), the business driven approach leads to small silos of implementation that each have their own little ROI, but have an overall very high TCO because there is no leverage beyond every single little application. Jorgen says a good approach can come from both sides. I agree, and would like to add the key is in doing it together, as both skill sets are needed. Hardly surprising!
1.One Version of the Truth
Jorgen doesn't believe in it anymore, he is happy if there is just one version of the facts (data quality, lineage, etc). Hmmm... I am still more hopeful. There's ways of achieving it that are less political of nature ("One Version is fine as long as it is My Version..."). For those of you who have followed the blog a bit longer, the answer is in "horizontal alignment." But that's for a next blog...
frank
