It is this writer's belief that business intelligence fails at the earliest and most important step in the BI process: planning. In order to answer the questions your company has, you will need to clearly understand what they are looking for--which is a lot easier than it sounds.
While the Lean Six Sigma approach is rarely linked with business intelligence, it is a concept that relies heavily on data, measures and analysis to support and encourage process improvement efforts. These can be provided by the BI function in the organization. The two disciplines can work together in a symbiotic relationship--one requiring data to solve problems, the other requiring problems for the data it can provide.
To understand BI, it is important to know the steps to take. And as our department takes off in a new direction, a fresh perspective offers some valuable insight.
Whatever the scope of your latest BI project, you can't afford to overlook the business justification for moving forward. Analyze this, every time.
A wide variety of technology solutions and services are available to help organizations implement, customize and improve their project portfolio management processes. Here is our April roundup of recent announcements from Daptiv, HP, Oracle, Planview and PowerSteering.
BI isn't an official Olympic event (yet), but if you want to go for the gold on your next project, you're going to need some world-class players.
A new agile procurement process--one that can operate in conjunction with and alongside an agile software development methodology--should significantly improve both the procurement of software vendor’s services and and successful delivery of software projects. This article will explore the underlying principles as well as map the reconciliation points required to harmonize agile development and procurement methods.
New Business Intelligence offering from Oracle features role-based intelligence to track project performance.
In any business intelligence cycle, the analysis step is critical to providing value back to the organization. But don't confuse information with intelligence...
A project management instructor shares why he uses the scenario of a Business Intelligence system implementation in order to go beyond the textbooks and explore the many ways that real-world projects get messy — and how solid project management practices can help sort it out.
Just when you thought you had your BI methodology down, everything changes. With new applications gaining favor, your methods are going to have to evolve to meet the changing needs of your data management.
The Field of Dreams saying: "If you build it, they will come!" doesn't hold true in the world of BI. You need to provide the right training to the right users to have a successful BI implementation.
Learn by doing, but be sure you have a winning coach. Mentoring is key to a successful project implementation. Use this guide to get the best out of a methodology guru to mentor your project team in action.
How robust and ready for launch is your project? Rate your own project on many success-indicator details in important areas using this extensive questionnaire. The results should help you discover your project's maturity level in terms of probabilities for success and where adjustments should be made.
How can you adapt Scrum-like tools and techniques within a Waterfall project management environment? What can you do to reduce resistance and reap the benefits Scrum has to offer? In short, how can you get down and Scrummy within a Waterfall world? Here are some ideas you might find useful.
This document outlines the strategy for deploying a standard systems development methodology and its supporting tools to IT project teams. It is a framework for ensuring that the project team understands, applies and measures the effectiveness of the methodology.
Here's a quick and dirty way to determine if a methodology or process is a roadmap or a roadblock.
One of the beneficial features of Mindjet MindManager is its ability to import and export to Microsoft Project. This feature is very useful when the project manager is managing project execution while trying to control the project schedule.
Understanding philosophical foundations are required for success in managing projects in the “real world”. That will allow you to better pick and choose which methodology (essentially a philosophical framework) to adopt--not adopt or mix and match to achieve project success.
The basic premise for the New York state project management methodology is that there are two lifecycles in managing a software project: the Project Management Lifecycle and the System Development Lifecycle. This article briefly examines both cycles, worthy processes to follow for any organization seeking a quality PM solution.
There are many ways you can poison your PMO and ensure that it doesn’t see tomorrow’s sunrise. In our last article, we looked at some leading PMO killers such as failing to identify an identity, ignoring your stakeholders and making things complicated. In the conclusion of this two-part series, we look at five additional deadly deeds.
Looking for the path to BI enlightenment? Here's a start.
A Project Charter (sometimes referred to as the Project Plan) basically defines your project. This is a high-level example of a Project Charter for implementing a methodology, but the structure and approach will work for any project.
The Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) is a quantitative decision-making methodology that uses pair-wise comparisons to determine the importance of relative evaluation criteria and the relative strengths of decision alternatives. This document is a crash-course in AHP and is designed to help get you making difficult project decisions (particularly package software-related ones) quickly, confidentally and rationally.
Activity Based Costing emerged in the 1980s as a technical theory to provide managers more accurate cost and profitability information about processes, products, services and customers. Though it has many shortcomings, it reveals new insights about operations. Implementing ABC requires a structured methodology, though each organization has unique characteristics that call for unique solution.
How many projects does your organization have underway right now? Join the conversation with our SME to help solve this surprisingly challenging question.
Although the role of the business stakeholder has evolved using agile as a methodology, the business need or pesky constraint typically remains for delivering functionality by a particular date. Hence, project success many times is still measured by delivering functionality by a pre-defined date to meet business goals. Here we offer some suggestions to try if your organization is using an agile methodology--yet expected to deliver a large-scale project that has the same constraints that have existed over time.
Why do PMOs have such a high failure rate? It's time to take a look at the top 10 PMO worst practices--and advice on how to avoid them.
Need help with project recovery? A whole new skill set and strategy is needed to recover an IT project from free fall. Here we provide practical recovery pointers on four project areas for failing IT projects, with a focus on software development for business applications.
Turn the key, the car doesn't start...what else is new? In Business Intelligence, an outsourced solution is an appetite for disaster. Here's how to avoid it.
Agile methods are powerful approaches that bring many benefits to how we undertake project work. However, they are not immune to misuse or failure. The following list of five common pitfalls is often seen in organizations switching to agile.
Welcome to the PMO! Does your Program Management Office have a plan for helping new project managers? More than any other function, the PMO varies hugely from one organization to the next--and even from one division to the next. That means that there will always be a ramp-up period for anyone entering as a project manager--and yet many PMOs make no allowance for this.
Do PMOs have value? Arguably, yes. At least...sometimes. According to the results of recent research, the presence of a PMO was often a contributor to the attainment of organizational value. What was of particular concern, however, was the actual role of the PMO within the organization. Two broad types emerged within the research; find out what they are inside...
Few know the evolution of Application Lifecycle Management and how the Structured Revolution of the 1970s and '80s was a major turning point in software development. This article presents a retrospective on ALM and Structured Development Life Cycles--those that shaped it, the influencing principles and the related methodologies and tools the movement spawned.
Improve your organization's process management capabilities by implementing a toolset that stores your customized methodologies as reusable, improvable processes and converts them into detailed project plans. Here's a Microsoft Project Plan for implementing just such a toolset.
Imagine if you could get the stages and steps of a Distributed Application Development methodology distilled into a ready-to-use Microsoft Project plan. You can! Download it now.
Primavera offers training courses to help you master its TeamPlay tool. This course description summary will help you choose the course you need.
You've tested the new system or application and found some bugs that require the attention of the development team. This form will help you characterize the type, description and disposition of post-testing system change requests.
This document outlines the Enterprise-wide Analysis, which describes the enterprise application package’s features and functions, analyses on its cost-benefit and risks, and the technical requirements to be supported.
A lot can change over the course of a century. How much has changed since you first designed your BI architecture? Maybe it's time for a little renovation.
It’s time that we face up to a fundamental reality: organizations grapple with making project management work successfully on a consistent basis. Yes, there are exceptions--and some notable ones--but on the whole they simply prove the rule. It's time for a different approach.
Two essential tools for the successful project manager are methodologies and life cycles. Learn more about why you need these tools to succeed in project management.
When times are tough, competition for sponsor dollars gets even tougher. Here are some tips to help push your BI project to front of the line for funding.
There is no such thing as a perfect methodology. Each has advantages and disadvantages. Each has situations they handle well and situations where their use will spell disaster. Unfortunately, most organizations choose simplicity over common sense. A better way begins with some questions.
Do we buy a methodology, or do we build it in-house? This presentation touches on key points you must know.
What is the hidden danger of offshore development in Business Intelligence? It's called data security. Offshore development for BI applications puts data security in the spotlight. How can you ensure that your data is properly enabled through the BI application?
A project management office can operate on a continuum, from providing project management support functions in the form of training, software, standardized policies and procedures to actual direct management and responsibility for achieving the project objectives. Here, we look at some of the key responsibilities and features of a typical PMO.
Earned Value Management is recognized within the project management domain as an effective cost and risk management technique. The formulas are not difficult to understand. So if EV isn’t difficult to calculate, why isn’t it more prevalent?
Why are we afraid to face the truth about project failures and how can we overcome it? For starters, we need to view failure as part of the learning process, a required step on the road to success.
A new book emphasizes the integration of project management and change management to improve the chances of success for business, IT and other organizational initiatives.
