On point

Don't let BI make you dumb


Spot on here.  I especially like the comment on sitting with the sales VP and only after going through 9 reports, were they actually able to see one that was of any worth to them.  This happens all of the time when going through a project.  Users are brought in, they say I would want this and would want that.  What happens is that multiple reports are made for a fragmented user base, where no one report is used as much as one would like.  This makes the ROI almost impossible to reach (see my previous post here where I expound on this more) and then possibly making the project a failure. 

Know your audience is also very important, people do not like what they think of as Big Brother, especially in an economy that has people nervous for their jobs as it is.  On top of that, there was always this feeling that I got when dealing with certain users where they looked at BI as the enemy, that BI was going to replace them and then they would be out of a job.  While in some cases this is true, in many, it would only enhance their jobs, getting rid of day to day drivel and allowing them to concentrate on improving their own personal ROI. 

Back to Baseball

I guess the division series had an affect?

Pretty neat visual here, shows the how the expansion of baseball (first geographically, then the expansion of the leagues, then the expansion of the playoffs) affected the length of the season.

The travel times back in the day were pretty insane though (there were not team charters that flew them out one hour after games time), so it is interesting to see that the length of the series in days, including off days was not that horrible.

I guess the real culprit here is TV.  The expansion of the playoffs is one thing (and now we are going to have another round.. if the rumors are true), but EVERY game is on at this point, so they have to spread them out to avoid as much overlap as possible.  Good news this year though, barring weather, its over before Halloween.

Agile is the way to sucess

Completely agree with the author on this one:

According to Gartner, 70 to 80 percent of business intelligence projects fail. The solution could be a more agile development process — and organization.

Having been through this, BI is seen as vaporware until something is delivered.  Users can "test" a new application, they can see mock ups, they are involved from the very beginning.  Enterprise application also have something called a release schedule, which BI generally does not have.  An application evolves, a BI report is the end point generally. 

The issue with an agile development life-cycle that I have run into is that the people that are on the project have to be able to adapt to requirements that are not clear cut, the end result is not known, and they generally have to be free thinking and have a keen awareness of what the business is what they MAY be looking for.  In a best case scenario the end user is involved not only at the requirements phase, but going forward so as to clarify, add, remove requirements as the process moves along.  Given how the economy is, this may be harder than it was in the past, where users are more concerned about getting their day to day done as opposed to helping with enhancements.

Last point, what is a BI project failure?  Is it the system never gets put into production, or the system does not live up to expectations?  If it is the latter, I can believe the percentages, since it never seems that people use the system as they said they would when they were giving the requirements.  To illustrate, we put in a module for one specific group of users that took six months to develop and deliver (not very agile), and the end result, 10 reports a week being run.  I would classify that a failure in that the ROI will never be there at that rate.  There is also an opportunity cost associated with that as well, those 6 months could have been used on something else that may have been more useful to the business. 

Where do people come from?

People Movin

A pretty slick way to show where the emigrants are coming from (and the inverse as well).  Very, very nice. 

Ease of Use versus Power

Very interesting read (here is the link)

“With ‘ease of use’ now surpassing ‘functionality’ for the first time as the dominant BI platform buying criterion, vocal, demanding and influential business users are increasingly driving BI purchasing decisions, most often choosing easier to use data discovery tools over traditional BI platforms — with or without IT's consent,” said Mr. Bertram.

I like how they are starting to realize that ease of use is better to have than a whole lot of bells and whistles that no one uses. What does scare me is the with or without the IT consent.  I have been, and will continue to go through this, given that all this can do is lead to the infamous 'spreadmarts', which can lead to more than one version of the truth.  Its a catch 22, make it simple enough for anyone to install and you get a propagation of data all over the enterprise, or make it so IT has to support it and you get a stable, but much less agile solution.  It is a tough choice.