There was so much going on last week at the
TDWI World Conference in Chicago that I am not sure where to start! There seemed to be a lot of attendees just beginning large Business Intelligence (
BI) projects or at crucial data integration stages. I was impressed – yet challenged – by the audience to take a long hard look at the data issues.
I am going to kick off this week with a
BI & The Chicken Pot Pie three part series on the key highlights from TDWI.
PART 1: TK’s TDWI World Conference Highlight on BI Program Management
Nancy Willams' class on
BI Program Management was a comprehensive overview of the best practices to set up an ongoing, iterative and strategic BI program. You walk away with a clear understanding of the shifts you must make to manage programs versus managing BI projects. I found Nancy’s workshop approach informative and the step by step process to assess goals, capabilities and document a baseline are well known
BI best practices.
As Williams advocates, you have to define the scope of what you are doing up front... are you engaging in a program or a project? That sounds like a basic question, but haven’t we learned that the basic questions are the ones that trip us up in the end? As she points out there are some things to remember as you define your scope:
A BI PROGRAM has certain characteristics… continuous, simultaneous overlapping projects, managed across multiple organizations, dynamic and responsive, broad and shallow, community focused, technology evolution, inclusive of operations
A BI PROJECT has different characteristics… finite, defined work, dependencies with other related projects, team focused, patterned & repeatable, narrow and deep, tasks and schedule dependent, implement specific technology, turnover to operations
I also want to mention that Williams’ brought up the hidden gotcha folks sometimes forget who are leading the BI program – you have to be a marketer. As she stated in the class, the folks in your organization have other places and ways to get information – and if they don’t understand what you are providing they will go the path of least resistance. You can’t hide your
BI light under a barrel!
I know not everyone has the travel budgets to attend multi-day conferences – and in light of that I am providing a link to the
SAS BI Pathfinder online assessment which you can take in just a few minutes! The
BI Pathfinder survey is based on the Information Evolution Model we use to help organizations self-assess strategic use of information. Are you using data just to operate your business in a departmental silo or for enterprise innovation?
This simple survey enables you to quickly benchmark your organizations’ people, process, technology and culture to identify where you are today and chart a course for data driven innovation. The
BI Pathfinder assessment also has valuable free resources such as white papers and research reports for download!
Part two of my “TK’s TDWI Highlights” will focus on
Cindi Howson’s “
Evaluating BI Toolsets and BI Tools in Action” workshop. Her class is always interesting and featured the vendors Business Objects, MicroStrategy and QlikTech (QlikView). More to come in my next installment!
As Business Intelligence Product Marketing Manager for SAS, I’m responsible for the Global message direction, strategy and marketing of SAS business intelligence. More on me. About the pot pie, I'm a southern girl, and that's comfort food. But food for thought -- I can explain.