Peter GausdenIT Director Corporate Applications| Cooperators InsuranceGuelph, Ontario, Canada
I am a Director of Business Intelligence at a large Insurance Company who has adopted Agile for development of it's core business systems. I have been challeged with implementing Agile methodology for the development of Data Warehouse projects. I have been doing Data Warehouse projects for over 15 years and am struggling with adopting Agile.
We utilize a three tier architecture with Source to DW to DM. The reports are created by the users after the Marts are delivered.
The biggest question that I struggle with is how would we chunk down the development in order to demonstrate business function.
The obvious answer is to package based on reporting needs. Unfortunately our users (Actuarial and Product Manufacturing) don't articulate report needs. Requirements are articulated as data needs.
I'm interested in hearing about actual Data Warehouse projects that have used Agile. Could we open a dialogue about your experiences? Saving Changes...
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Peter GausdenIT Director Corporate Applications| Cooperators InsuranceGuelph, Ontario, Canada
A further clarification of my earlier post is that I am looking for help on applying Agile to the deploying of data models, ETL mappings, and infrastructure components not reports or dashboards. Saving Changes...
Looks like no one wanted to touch this question huh? ;-)
I have managed Agile (XP) projects in the past. The trick is to understand that there is no "silver bullet" and one size does not fit all. Working as a consultant has exposed me to numerous companies and industries. Without a doubt, one of the biggest mistakes I've seen is when a company forces one methodology on development of all projects. That being said, lets see what we can do here.
Does your company map data marts within the warehouse to specific business departments? By this, I'm looking for ownership of the data fields and am use to business ownership by mart... Saving Changes...
Peter GausdenIT Director Corporate Applications| Cooperators InsuranceGuelph, Ontario, Canada
Bethany,
I knew it was a tough question but I was surprised at the lack of responses.
It is possible to map a Data Mart to an owner or business area. The challenge I have is applying agile to the development of the Enterprise Data Warehouse. The EDW is a foundational component requiring that a data model be in place before further development can begin. This is contrary to Agile. It seems many people speak to using agile for Business Intelligece but few if any are using it for EDW development. Saving Changes...
Is there a specific reason you have to chunk the development by business function? is there another way to chunk it out that might make more sense from a development perspective?
All that being said, you may have already found the following website but I think it provides some good "getting started" info when using agile for EDW...
also meant to mention that something else I've learned as a consultant is to recommend to companies that if they are going to force a single methodology to be used on all projects, it is worth it to spend the money on training your people on that methodology. Hire professional trainers to bring in house or send your teams out to classes. It may be a large up front cost but in the long run it will save you tons of money, time and headaches... Saving Changes...
Mark KromerTechnical Product Manager| Oracle CorpOviedo, Fl, United States
Peter - Although it does not apply specifically just to Agile methodologies, have you tried working through sessions with your customers (internal users) using a Fact / Qualifier Matrix (FQM)?
I have found that to be successful in the past to uncover the questions that the report writers are actually trying to answer. This then drives the EDW design and data models based on actual business requirements.
An FQM does not have "heavy" documentation needs, baselines, etc. so it plays nicely in an Agile approach in that the questions used to map the facts & qualifiers (dimensions) can be based on user stories as described in Mike Cohn's books.
This has worked well on a couple of BIDW projects I PM'd for Agile development teams. Saving Changes...
Hannes KropfProject Manager| ITERGO GmbHHamburg, Hamburg, Germany
Hello from Germany,
this is an old thread. But I am interested in agile BI too.
Were there any new experiences build in the last five years?
In the meantime another book arrived in the market but I am looking for real experiences. Are there any or are Agile and BI or Datawarehouse two parallel universes?
