BI Projectmanagement

Business Intelligence (BI) projects differ from "traditional projects" in a number of ways, many of which are very significant: 

• They often span different departments, processes and even business units;
• They cover a mixture of strategy, management and technology and thus are "politically" sensitive; 
• Close cooperation between Business and ICT is absolutely essential; 
• BI systems in general access data from every source in the company, so they are operational, tactical and strategic all at the same time, which leads to various issues of responsibility and confidentiality; 
• The track record of this type of project is not good, statistically there is a greater chance of failure; 
• In general two different types of project management are required: for the information analysis and the architecture the traditional "waterfall" method is generally the best approach, whereas for the implementation the more modern "iterative" approach is usually favoured on the basis of "think big but start small"; 
• The team has to be multi-discipline.

The points shown above are so important that Passionned has developed a special project methodology to take account of them: the BI project cycle. This methodology has been put to the test by various (large) organisations and has proved to be very successful. Whilst elements of other project management methodologies are used, like business cases from Prince II and DSDM , the BI project cycle places the emphasis on aspects that are specific to BI projects.

It is however still true that a large percentage of Business Intelligence (BI) and datawarehousing projects fail, often because the project managers have not take sufficient account of the points above that add considerably to the risks. It shouldn't however be forgotten that a good business case is still essential for success, and whilst the business case can be found it is often ignored. Summing up: good preparation is essential, use a suitable project methodology, weigh the risks and put together a skilled and balanced project team. This is where we can help you.