BI Program Business Mistake 3 - Big Bang Approach

Big Bang is a commonly used term to indicate an enterprise wide deployment of a new technology or business methodology. Attempting to adopt a big bang approach to BI is fatal. Not only does it make the program so overly complex that it simply winds to a standstill, but the political chaos that will ensue as each area of the business attempts to claim ownership and/or resist sharing 'their' information will mean the BI program will never get off the ground.

Business Solution

1. Using a BI Opportunity Assessment identify those areas of the business that are candidates for improvement using BI.
2. Select from this group those areas which directly contribute to key strategic objectives
3. From the group select the ONE BI project that:
   
   1. Will provide the best return in the shortest time
   2. Has a clearly definable and assessible data set
   3. Has a desire to improve in performance
   4. Is small enough to implement within 2-3 months, but significant enough for others to notice
4. Complete the implementation and undertake a complete 360 learning review
5. Celebrate the success across the enterprise to encourage others to follow and executive to sign off budget for further BI projects
6. Develop the ideal BI Program Roadmap and continue to learn from each iteration

IT Solution

1. Ringfence the data for project one
2. Apply the meta definition and MDM principles, in negotiation with the business
3. Develop a data mart from which the BI tools will run queries without impacting the performance on enterprise applications
4. As each iteration is complete, and when data quality tools and practices are in place, implement a data warehouse or virtual system to manage a single source of data

The key to BI Program success is the plan strategically to include the whole organization, then roll out iteratively using strategic value to help define the order in the roadmap.

Next: BI Program Business Mistake 4 - Dashboard Blindness

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BI Program Mistakes Index | Business Mistakes | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | IT Mistakes | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 |