Well it has been a bit longer than I had planned it to be since my last blog. I've been buried deep at work on planning and defining all the activities needed to re-engineer a North American wide reporting solution: from project management, to planning for new business analysis, to envisaging the final customer experience of the system. Why am I doing it all? Well as is life in this economic climate we have few resources dedicated to an overly ambitious project. C'est la vie.
In addition to this I have been reading up a lot on business analysis best practices and how they relate to business intelligence and also on methods for improving meta data management. It's been a lot to take in. The upshot of all this is that I have been thinking about the management aspects of business intelligence projects. How perhaps they can be organized and how the business and information groups can and should interact to pull a project forward.
I said project. Is BI a project? Well not really. As I briefly mentioned in my hello blog, BI is an evolving entity within an organization. At best you can describe it as a program that manages individual projects that are all working towards the overall strategic program goal. You do have a program strategy, don't you? Therein lies the rub, what BI needs to be and what senior management want's it to be are often disconnected. BI needs to be a continuous program, management likes it to be contained within a single project with a start and end date. Overcoming this disconnect is something to be explored at a later date.
Alas I have much to do so that is all for today. Next post I will explore organization and the roles and traits needed to be successful in BI.
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Hello.
Well that is a very unoriginal but at least polite introduction to my new blog.
What is this blog about? Well right now nothing. It is an experiment really. This is a place for me to discuss and explore my passion for intelligence. Human intelligence? Animal intelligence? No. Nothing so exciting. I'll be looking at intelligence that is important to many many people out in the world. The intelligence of commerce. Business Intelligence.
I will explore what makes business intelligence work. What does not. I will look at the methodologies for introducing and running business intelligence in the enterprise. Am I an expert? No. But I have worked in the business and IT space around reporting, information management, data governance, data warehousing and ETL for some 10 plus years. My experience is primarily in Oracle database and Cognos Business Intelligence technologies. I have been involved in the full development life cycle of business reporting projects and I have learned a few things on what works and more importantly what does not work when one undertakes a business intelligence project.
As I am a long way from knowing everything and because I am always willing to learn more I welcome the opportunity to be challenged in my beliefs on what works for BI. Over the upcoming weeks expect to see more as I put my thoughts together. I apologize up front if at first my posts seem a little disorganized. It will take me a little while to get used to this and workout what this tool can do.
In a way that apes what business intelligence is. BI is not a project but an evolving entity within the business. It needs to be dynamic and respond to changing business conditions so that it is adaptable to the needs of a dynamic organization. The business user will not always know what they don't know and often their needs will evolve as they use BI tools and solutions. So in a way will this blog. I really don't know what I don't know at the moment so as I use this blogger my expectations of the tool will change as my knowledge increases. In a way that is what life is about. This is what intelligence is. It is continuous learning and evolution.
What is this blog about? Well right now nothing. It is an experiment really. This is a place for me to discuss and explore my passion for intelligence. Human intelligence? Animal intelligence? No. Nothing so exciting. I'll be looking at intelligence that is important to many many people out in the world. The intelligence of commerce. Business Intelligence.
I will explore what makes business intelligence work. What does not. I will look at the methodologies for introducing and running business intelligence in the enterprise. Am I an expert? No. But I have worked in the business and IT space around reporting, information management, data governance, data warehousing and ETL for some 10 plus years. My experience is primarily in Oracle database and Cognos Business Intelligence technologies. I have been involved in the full development life cycle of business reporting projects and I have learned a few things on what works and more importantly what does not work when one undertakes a business intelligence project.
As I am a long way from knowing everything and because I am always willing to learn more I welcome the opportunity to be challenged in my beliefs on what works for BI. Over the upcoming weeks expect to see more as I put my thoughts together. I apologize up front if at first my posts seem a little disorganized. It will take me a little while to get used to this and workout what this tool can do.
In a way that apes what business intelligence is. BI is not a project but an evolving entity within the business. It needs to be dynamic and respond to changing business conditions so that it is adaptable to the needs of a dynamic organization. The business user will not always know what they don't know and often their needs will evolve as they use BI tools and solutions. So in a way will this blog. I really don't know what I don't know at the moment so as I use this blogger my expectations of the tool will change as my knowledge increases. In a way that is what life is about. This is what intelligence is. It is continuous learning and evolution.
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