The Core of the (BI) Issue…?
I’ve been talking with a lot of speakers, writers and other industry professionals trying to get a handle on the challenges of successful Business Intelligence (BI) projects. One thing is becoming increasingly clear, and that is that of course you have to start in small steps. I don’t think that’s a suprirse by now.
What is surprising, at least to me, is that people are having a tough time defining the small steps. It seems like scope creep pops up so quickly as people are working through what needs to be done that projects get out of hand almost immediately. As we’ve been talking through potential projects even internally, it’s hard to pull out a single piece that can be addressed, that makes a useful project and that doesn’t get out of hand. Here are some approaches that may help:
1. Pick an existing report – then pick a piece of it. Don’t reproduce the whole thing with all of the drill-down capabilities and graphing you’ve always dreamed of. Start with a really small section – perhaps the summary information or other basic bones of the report. By picking an existing report, you can check your work against the existing information. Make sure you’re pulling data that "balances" to the original, otherwise people won’t trust the new report.
2. Create an adjunct to an existing report – is there some other slice of information that people would like to know from information in an existing report? If so, go after that information. Perhaps it’s a bit more detail, or a different look at the information. Creating it as an adjunct rather than a replacement can help acceptance of the new report.
3. Create a new look at information that you can use persaonlly, then share it. By creating something you can use, you can get some benefit – but you can then share it by showing your peers and explaining how you’re able to pull the information, what you do with it, etc. Use their interest to help build their first BI tools to get their own information.
What other ways have you used to get to information so people can help participate in the process, but still keep it small getting started?
Let me know…