Boris Evelson wrote a white paper for Forrester on BI trends titled: Trends 2011 And Beyond: Business Intelligence. The document is intended for “Business Process Professionals” but I think it is valuable for anyone that thinks about BI and how to improve it.
This post is a synopsis of the paper (or, Joel’s Notes) intended to provide the highlights of the paper.
Executive Summary: In short, Evelson maintains that successful BI will be challenging as we move forward: “While BI maturity in enterprises continues to grow, and BI tools have become more function-rich and robust, the promise of efficient and effective BI solutions remains challenging at best and elusive at worst. Why? Two main reasons: First, BI is all about best practices and lessons learned, which only come with years of experience; second, earlier-generation BI approaches cannot easily keep up with ever-changing business and regulatory requirements…(we) should adopt Agile BI processes, technologies, and architectures to improve (our) chances of delivering successful BI initiatives”.
Why do BI initiatives sometimes fail?
Lack of ability and flexibility can lead to unsuccessful BI initiatives
Implementing BI requires using best practices and building upon lessons learned
- end-to-end BI implementations require closely coordinated efforts to put together multiple components like data sourcing, integration, modeling, metrics, queries, reports, dashboards, portals, and alerts.
- It’s difficult to define future BI requirements as business and regulatory requirements change.
- The business may not have strong requirements to begin with
BI technologies and processes have not kept pace with business realities
Standard BI solutions are neither flexible nor agile enough to react and adapt to information requirements that seem to change with ever-increasing speed.
Centralization has not led to agile, streamlined BI implementations
Although centralization can reduce costs, duplication of effort, and provide a “single version of the truth”, it is often too bureaucratic and cumbersome (anything but agile).
The figure below shows path of BI from the 90’s to the 10’s.
Agility is the key to efficient and effective business process
Untamed business processes: “Business processes that form in the seams and shadows of the enterprise, require a balance of human and system support, and cross department, technology, information, and packaged application silos to meet end-to-end business outcomes”
Because business processes can change periodically, traditional SDLC doesn’t work well for automating untamed processes.
Forrester defines Agile Business Intelligence as: “An approach that combines processes, methodologies, organizational structure, tools, and technologies that enable strategic, tactical, and operational decision-makers to be more flexible and more responsive to the fast pace of changes to business and regulatory requirements”.
And, I love this quote: “No technology or processes can address BI challenges if a company’s organizational structure and enterprise culture are not already on firm, agile ground” – very reminiscent of my earlier post “It’s not me, it’s my clubs”.
Best practices to prepare your organization for agile BI:
- Insist on business ownership and governance of BI
- Emphasize organizational and cultural change management
- Decouple data preparation from data usage processes in end-to-end BI cycles
- Approach and treat front- and back-office BI requirements and users differently
- Establish hub-and-spoke organizational models
- Use a combination of top-down and bottom-up approaches to BI design and applications
- Use Agile development methodologies
- Enable BI self-service for business users
Evelson continues “Once the organization is aligned for agility, the next step is to consider and implement agile BI processes”.
Once you’ve developed your swing, it’s time for a new set of clubs (Next generation technologies).
Next Generation Technologies are the future of agile BI – there are four major sub categories:
- Automated – eliminates manual work to free up resources for true value-added tasks.
- Unified – brings different BI use cases together in a unified platform.
- Pervasive – make BI applications available whenever strategic, tactical and operational decision-makers need to analyze information.
- Limitless – BI must operate on information without any borders or restrictions.
Evelson goes on to list many vendors that represent each of the four sub categories above. (Here are some of the vendors without the additional information that the white paper lists about features)
Automation – Composite Software Discovery, IBM InfoSphere Discovery, Appian, Lombardi, Savvion, Alteryx, Endeca, Cognos AAF, JackBe, Kalido, etc.
Unified – Attivio, Endeca, TIBCO Spotfire, Information Builders, Oracle, Cognos, Alteryx, Quiterian, Kalido, Business Objects, SAS, etc.
Pervasive – Most BI vendors, Appian, Fujitsu, Global360, HandySoft, Lomvardi, Metastorm, Savvion, Business Objects, TIBCO Spotfire, Oracle, Information Builders, QlikTech, etc.
Limitless – Most BI vendors, PowerPivot, QlikTech, Quiterian, Attivio, Endeca, Saffron, TIBCO Spotfire, SISense, etc.
The real meat of the white paper is to say: Agile and Next-Gen BI may be the future of successful BI implementations. Embrace it, keep an open mind about new technologies, don’t be afraid to let the business have it, but prepare your organization first. There is no substitute for good process, best practices, strategic vision, and proper organizational structure. Get these things right and you will be prepared to provide the kind of Business Intelligence that the business needs.
You can get the white paper here (you have to register).
Filed under: Business Intelligence, Process | Tagged: Agile, BI, Business Intelligence, Forrester, Process | Leave a comment »