March 10, 2011 – Companies often market their business intelligence and data warehousing products as agile solutions, meaning that they are easy to work with and adaptable to business changes. In the project management genre, the word Agile frequently refers to the software development methodology.
We found this interesting topic on Smart Data collective in their article, “Delivering Data Warehousing and BI Projects using Agile.” So does using Agile produce better results than other methodologies when building a business intelligence and data warehousing application? It is a complex process regardless of the methodology you choose, but the author believes Agile doesn’t increase the success percentage of the project. However, he still thinks project management should done using Agile due to the speed and budget check and balance system it offers.
Seems contradictory to me. What do you think? Any experience with Agile methodology?
Melody K. Smith
Sponsored by Data Harmony, a unit of Access Innovations, the world leader in indexing and making content findable.
Gleanster just published a new benchmark report on Agile Business Intelligence that may be of interest – http://www.gleanster.com/reports/reports/agile-business-intelligence Would welcome your feedback.
Great post Melody. You make some interesting points about “agile” business applications. We have a community for IM professionals (www.openmethodology.org) and have bookmarked this post for our users. Look forward to reading more of your work in the future.
Nice Post Melody,
we actually wrote a few posts about Agile BI earlier this year: “Agile BI, What Problem are you Trying to Solve?” and “Agile Business Intelligence as a Release Strategy” (links below). In a nutshell, we think that if one views one’s BI program as a portfolio of applications prioritized by business strategy (strategic importance), then the result is, in a sense, agile.
Doing so creates faster development for BI projects that have been created and developed side-by-side with one’s business users. Which is, essentially, the agile BI methodology.
* http://www.decisionpath.com/2011/01/18/agile-bi-what-problem-are-you-trying-to-solve/
* http://www.decisionpath.com/2011/01/26/agile-business-intelligence-as-a-bi-release-strategy/