Agile Business Intelligence (BI) and Data Warehousing (DW) Project Managers

Agile Analytics: A Value-Driven Approach to Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing by Ken W. Collier

Agile Analytics is a groundbreaking book. It provides practical approaches to transition BI & DW projects to Agile. I quickly read it cover to cover as it provided key insights into how to make established BI & DW projects more Agile and therefore more failure-proof.

This book leverages Jim Highsmith’s Agile Project Management (APM) framework based on an Envision ->Explore cycle rather than the Plan -> Do approach. This paradigm shift aims to address uncertainty in our project teams. This uncertainty has been addressed in a programmatic, waterfall way in the past. And Lots of Projects have Failed.

Ken provides a very clear and readable book which walks teams through transitioning to Agile. He provides many examples of collaboration between team stakeholders throughout the project life cycle that adapt the Envision -> Explore approach to the amount of change experienced by BI & DW teams.

This book elegantly speaks to both business sponsors and technical team members. For Project Managers it provides some of the best examples of early planning, user stories, and use Case Diagrams I have seen for BI/DW projects.

Ken has provided thoughtful insights on how to increase Agility:

• Solid Tools – Needed for BI exploration to increase the speed of team and ability to share insights with users/customers.
• Agile Infrastructure – Realigning systems such as config management and testing infrastructure can be significant, yet often, underestimated part of project planning.
• Agile workmanship – Even with solid tools & infrastructure, there is a learning curve for development teams.
• Agile architecture – Make Up Front Design (UFD) more Agile by leveraging proven architectures or patterns; quickly.
• Customer Commitment – BI projects still require external input into planning, capability definition and feature prioritization. So incorporating user education on how results are pulled, calculated and displayed is very important to allow them to be effective in their roles.

Click here to see book on Amazon.  Note:  I live in California and therefore do not receive any compensation for this recommendation. That said. I just like the book.