Purchase your Section 508 Compliance Support guide now!

Purchase your Section 508 Compliance Support guide now!

Self-Service BI

Topic: Self-Service BI

There's a lot of talk these days about the importance of self-service business intelligence (BI), but little discussion about the downsides. Unfortunately, I've seen self-service BI initiatives go completely awry.
Typically, a small percentage of power users employ the new-fangled tools to create tens of thousands of reports-many of which contain conflicting or inaccurate data-and this makes it harder for casual users to find the right report or trust its contents. Ironically, many turn to IT to create a custom report, which expands the report backlog that self-service BI was supposed to eliminate. In addition, many power users use the self-service tools to query large data sets that they export to Excel for analysis. These runaway queries erode query performance significantly, making the BI environment even less inviting for casual users.
So despite its allure, self-service BI can cause overall BI usage to plummet, report backlogs to grow, query performance to diminish, and information inconsistency to increase. To avoid such unintended consequences, here are five ways to implement self-service BI properly:
1. Deploy the right type of self-service BI

Power users need ad hoc report creation while casual users need ad hoc report navigation. There is a big difference. Powers users need to create reports from scratch, often accessing data from multiple locations. Casual users, on the other hand, simply want a report or dashboard that contains their top ten performance metrics and makes it easy to drill down into details, if desired.
2. Don't abdicate responsibility for creating standard reports
To ensure that business units exploit the full value of the data warehousing resource, BI teams should take an active role in creating standard reports or dashboards for each group. This requires BI teams to get more engaged with the business, not less, which is usually what happens when an organization deploys self-service BI tools. It is not enough to create the data warehouse; if you want widespread adoption, you need to deliver the end-to-end solution.

3. Create a network of super users
Super users are technically-inclined power users in each department who function as extensions to the corporate BI team. Their job is to create ad hoc reports around the edges of the standard reports, suggest enhancements to the standard reports, and work with the BI Competency Center to define standards, select tools, and create a BI roadmap. Super users are the eyes and ears of the corporate BI team within each business group and critical to its success.
4. Liberate and manage power users
Power users can make or break a BI program. To get them on your side, give power users access to the best tools, unlimited access to data, and a sandbox within the data warehouse in which to conduct their ad hoc explorations. To ensure that they don't proliferate spreadmarts, limit their ability to publish reports back to the server and establish a review board of power users (i.e. their peers) to examine new requests for published reports. This two-pronged approach will both empower power users to generate critical insights while minimizing their ability to foment report chaos
5. Educate executives to use standard, certified reports
For self-service BI to really work, executives need to make a companywide declaration and commitment to use standard, certified reports or dashboards when making decisions. Of course, there will always be exceptions, like when standard reports don't contain the data needed to address issues required for a decision. But a corporate edict backed up by action makes all the difference.

Following these five steps will help your BI program achieve the holy grail of self-service BI.
Wayne Eckerson is director of TDWI Research at The Data Warehousing Institute. He can be reached at weckerson@tdwi.org.

Self-Service BI

Topic: Self-Service BI

There's a lot of talk these days about the importance of self-service business intelligence (BI), but little discussion about the downsides. Unfortunately, I've seen self-service BI initiatives go completely awry.
Typically, a small percentage of power users employ the new-fangled tools to create tens of thousands of reports-many of which contain conflicting or inaccurate data-and this makes it harder for casual users to find the right report or trust its contents. Ironically, many turn to IT to create a custom report, which expands the report backlog that self-service BI was supposed to eliminate. In addition, many power users use the self-service tools to query large data sets that they export to Excel for analysis. These runaway queries erode query performance significantly, making the BI environment even less inviting for casual users.
So despite its allure, self-service BI can cause overall BI usage to plummet, report backlogs to grow, query performance to diminish, and information inconsistency to increase. To avoid such unintended consequences, here are five ways to implement self-service BI properly:
1. Deploy the right type of self-service BI

Power users need ad hoc report creation while casual users need ad hoc report navigation. There is a big difference. Powers users need to create reports from scratch, often accessing data from multiple locations. Casual users, on the other hand, simply want a report or dashboard that contains their top ten performance metrics and makes it easy to drill down into details, if desired.
2. Don't abdicate responsibility for creating standard reports
To ensure that business units exploit the full value of the data warehousing resource, BI teams should take an active role in creating standard reports or dashboards for each group. This requires BI teams to get more engaged with the business, not less, which is usually what happens when an organization deploys self-service BI tools. It is not enough to create the data warehouse; if you want widespread adoption, you need to deliver the end-to-end solution.

3. Create a network of super users
Super users are technically-inclined power users in each department who function as extensions to the corporate BI team. Their job is to create ad hoc reports around the edges of the standard reports, suggest enhancements to the standard reports, and work with the BI Competency Center to define standards, select tools, and create a BI roadmap. Super users are the eyes and ears of the corporate BI team within each business group and critical to its success.
4. Liberate and manage power users
Power users can make or break a BI program. To get them on your side, give power users access to the best tools, unlimited access to data, and a sandbox within the data warehouse in which to conduct their ad hoc explorations. To ensure that they don't proliferate spreadmarts, limit their ability to publish reports back to the server and establish a review board of power users (i.e. their peers) to examine new requests for published reports. This two-pronged approach will both empower power users to generate critical insights while minimizing their ability to foment report chaos
5. Educate executives to use standard, certified reports
For self-service BI to really work, executives need to make a companywide declaration and commitment to use standard, certified reports or dashboards when making decisions. Of course, there will always be exceptions, like when standard reports don't contain the data needed to address issues required for a decision. But a corporate edict backed up by action makes all the difference.

Following these five steps will help your BI program achieve the holy grail of self-service BI.
Wayne Eckerson is director of TDWI Research at The Data Warehousing Institute. He can be reached at weckerson@tdwi.org.

how to plan and manage projects

Tom Mochal provides valuable advice about how to plan and manage projects. Tom first describes a common-problem scenario, based on real-life situations. He then describes a solution, using practical project management practices and techniques.

Estimating the cost of an IT project can be a hit-or-miss proposition, especially if the task involves unfamiliar technology. Here is how one project manager used two methods to make sure his estimate was on target.

The dilemma
Sean works in the IT Research and Development (R&D) Department at Blue Sky Manufacturing. He was asked to create a proof-of-concept for sending information from the company intranet to new handheld devices. His boss had returned his first estimate for the project.

"I gave my boss a high-level estimate," Sean said. "But he said there were too many guesses in it. He asked me to get more facts and estimate the work to a greater degree of certainty. I agreed that my first attempt was a guess, but how can it be more reliable than that—we have never done a wireless project before."

"There are usually ways to estimate work that are better than guessing," I said. "Let's start at the beginning. Do you have a project definition?"

I was pleasantly surprised to learn that Sean did have an abbreviated project definition and a template that described what needed to be done on a proof-of-concept project.

"We have much of the information we need," Sean said. "But now what should I do? This technology is completely new to us."

Mentor advice
"First, the fact that you have a template should help us put together an initial estimate," I said. "Second, although your point about the technology being new to us is valid, handheld devices are not brand new. We should be able to validate our first estimate by talking to some experts who have experience in this area."

Many people struggle with estimating because they are not really clear about what they are trying to do. This may be especially true in R&D work. However, good estimates are the result of good techniques.

In Sean's case, he had the advantage of a project definition and a template to guide him through the proof-of-concept project process. From there, he should be able to estimate the work separately using two techniques:
  • A simple work breakdown estimate
  • Expert opinion

Break down the work
For the work breakdown technique, Sean needs to start with his work-plan template and estimate each activity. Activities that have been done before can be estimated reasonably well. New activities are more difficult to estimate, but the work breakdown structure, which defines activities at a more granular level, should help produce estimates that are reasonably close.

The lower-level estimates are added up to a summary number. Project management time is estimated at 15 percent of the summary total. Sean should also add a 20 percent contingency to cover the remaining estimating uncertainty and risk.

Consult the experts
The second technique is expert opinion. Even though Sean has not done this type of work, he can talk to a research analyst or an industry expert to gain an understanding of what is involved. These experts will know what other companies are doing and can validate or challenge the previous estimate.

If the two techniques do not yield similar results, Sean can go through the work breakdown estimate with the expert and determine which one might need revising. When Sean is comfortable that the two techniques are yielding similar estimates, he can document the estimate package and send it on to his boss—this time with substantial supporting detail.

Project management veteran Tom Mochal is director of internal development at a software company in Atlanta. Most recently, he worked for the Coca-Cola Company, where he was responsible for deploying, training, and coaching project management and life-cycle skills to the IS division. He's also worked for Eastman Kodak and Cap Gemini America and has developed a project management methodology called TenStep.


--
BI CENTRE
http://bicentre.blogspot.com


how to plan and manage projects

Tom Mochal provides valuable advice about how to plan and manage projects. Tom first describes a common-problem scenario, based on real-life situations. He then describes a solution, using practical project management practices and techniques.

Estimating the cost of an IT project can be a hit-or-miss proposition, especially if the task involves unfamiliar technology. Here is how one project manager used two methods to make sure his estimate was on target.

The dilemma
Sean works in the IT Research and Development (R&D) Department at Blue Sky Manufacturing. He was asked to create a proof-of-concept for sending information from the company intranet to new handheld devices. His boss had returned his first estimate for the project.

"I gave my boss a high-level estimate," Sean said. "But he said there were too many guesses in it. He asked me to get more facts and estimate the work to a greater degree of certainty. I agreed that my first attempt was a guess, but how can it be more reliable than that—we have never done a wireless project before."

"There are usually ways to estimate work that are better than guessing," I said. "Let's start at the beginning. Do you have a project definition?"

I was pleasantly surprised to learn that Sean did have an abbreviated project definition and a template that described what needed to be done on a proof-of-concept project.

"We have much of the information we need," Sean said. "But now what should I do? This technology is completely new to us."

Mentor advice
"First, the fact that you have a template should help us put together an initial estimate," I said. "Second, although your point about the technology being new to us is valid, handheld devices are not brand new. We should be able to validate our first estimate by talking to some experts who have experience in this area."

Many people struggle with estimating because they are not really clear about what they are trying to do. This may be especially true in R&D work. However, good estimates are the result of good techniques.

In Sean's case, he had the advantage of a project definition and a template to guide him through the proof-of-concept project process. From there, he should be able to estimate the work separately using two techniques:
  • A simple work breakdown estimate
  • Expert opinion

Break down the work
For the work breakdown technique, Sean needs to start with his work-plan template and estimate each activity. Activities that have been done before can be estimated reasonably well. New activities are more difficult to estimate, but the work breakdown structure, which defines activities at a more granular level, should help produce estimates that are reasonably close.

The lower-level estimates are added up to a summary number. Project management time is estimated at 15 percent of the summary total. Sean should also add a 20 percent contingency to cover the remaining estimating uncertainty and risk.

Consult the experts
The second technique is expert opinion. Even though Sean has not done this type of work, he can talk to a research analyst or an industry expert to gain an understanding of what is involved. These experts will know what other companies are doing and can validate or challenge the previous estimate.

If the two techniques do not yield similar results, Sean can go through the work breakdown estimate with the expert and determine which one might need revising. When Sean is comfortable that the two techniques are yielding similar estimates, he can document the estimate package and send it on to his boss—this time with substantial supporting detail.

Project management veteran Tom Mochal is director of internal development at a software company in Atlanta. Most recently, he worked for the Coca-Cola Company, where he was responsible for deploying, training, and coaching project management and life-cycle skills to the IS division. He's also worked for Eastman Kodak and Cap Gemini America and has developed a project management methodology called TenStep.


--
BI CENTRE
http://cognos8help.blogspot.com


Sign up at Oracle.com and attend any 5-day Live Virtual Class (LVC) before November 27, 2009

http://www.oracle.com

Sign up

at Oracle.com and attend any 5-day Live Virtual Class (LVC) before November 27, 2009.

Receive a Self-Study CD-ROM (SSCD) course of your choice...

FREE! *

Take a 5-day LVC and see first hand how this flexible option gives you the freedom to learn anywhere while expanding your Oracle product knowledge. Take advantage of these benefits:

Save time and money:

Eliminate travel by training from your home or office

Greater flexibility:

Learn whenever and wherever a class is scheduled

Same high-quality training:

Train with the same instructors, leverage the same high quality content, and use the same labs and exercises as our instructor-led classes

Outstanding online experience:

State-of-the-art collaboration tools ensure high levels of student-instructor interactivity

See the full list of LVCs available and sign up today.


--
BI CENTRE
http://bicentre.blogspot.com


Sign up at Oracle.com and attend any 5-day Live Virtual Class (LVC) before November 27, 2009

http://www.oracle.com

Sign up

at Oracle.com and attend any 5-day Live Virtual Class (LVC) before November 27, 2009.

Receive a Self-Study CD-ROM (SSCD) course of your choice...

FREE! *

Take a 5-day LVC and see first hand how this flexible option gives you the freedom to learn anywhere while expanding your Oracle product knowledge. Take advantage of these benefits:

Save time and money:

Eliminate travel by training from your home or office

Greater flexibility:

Learn whenever and wherever a class is scheduled

Same high-quality training:

Train with the same instructors, leverage the same high quality content, and use the same labs and exercises as our instructor-led classes

Outstanding online experience:

State-of-the-art collaboration tools ensure high levels of student-instructor interactivity

See the full list of LVCs available and sign up today.


--
BI CENTRE
http://cognos8help.blogspot.com