Considerations to a successful BI endeavor

I have always wondered why some BI projects are more successful than others. If you google “why BI projects succeed” you will find articles about failures, barriers and mistakes when implementing BI projects. While it is ironic, it does show that there are a lot more failures than there are successes. On a brighter note, it is said that

“failure is the mother of success” – Chinese idiom.

While we have many lessons on how to implement a BI project correctly, I do believe that properly defining the BI project is just as important in its implementation. Let’s consider the extremes of the following 4 perspectives:

1. Objectives
2. Success Criteria
3. Vision
4. Principles

Objectives

It is undoubtedly important to define the BI objective to meet the stakeholder’s expectations. On one extreme the objective could be focused on getting the best and most complete platform in place (technology oriented) and on the other it could be meeting very specific business objectives.

Success Criteria

To measure success, a success criteria is required. And would anyone consider a success criteria without considering the positive outcome? It is always easy to measure the projects based on the project deliverables (IT project). And in the other extreme of course is to measure the project based on ROI (advisory project).

Vision

Every project of course needs to have the end in mind. The envisaged solution provides the stakeholder with the understanding of how the solution will be able to meet the objectives. The vision could be narrowly focused on the user using the BI solution or on a broader perspective the vision could be painted on how the business could directly benefit from it.

Principles

There is of course "More than one way to skin a cat". There are many different types of BI related technology. Some puts its focus on visualization while others put importance to data credibility. Some have leverage for predictive analytics and others have superior report distribution. In order to make it simple to perform this selection, it is useful to list down the principles and priorities in meeting the objectives.

Dwelling on the extremes

It becomes more obvious that without properly defining the objectives, the success criteria, the vision and the principles, the project is doomed to fail even before it starts. When considering the extremes, it also becomes obvious that there is a big difference between an IT lead project and one that is lead by a business stakeholder. And when you dwell further into this topic, you will start to understand that all considerations fall back on the 4 perspectives - who to implement, how much budget to set aside, cloud or on premise, subscribe or perpetual licensing, out-of-the-box or customized.