Business & IT Issues

February 8, 2019

How to make a self-service BI tools deployment less painful

Why does self-service BI have to hurt so much? In theory, it should be the answer to all your problems. But so many enterprises end up […]
January 28, 2015

BI & Analytic Trends for Business Value

As mentioned in my post BI & Analytic Trends of 2015 – The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, while the hyped industry trends get all […]
January 9, 2015

BI & Analytic Trends of 2015 – The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

It’s the time of year when analysts, consultants, vendors and industry pundits publish their predictions on the trends that they feel will have significant impact on […]
August 19, 2014

The Shadow Knows! The Pros and Cons of Shadow Systems

DM Radio, Thursday August 21 3:00 EST When business pros can’t get the functionality they really want from IT, they often go rogue. That’s where shadow […]
July 21, 2014

Design a business intelligence system properly — for business users

What are some common mistakes that business intelligence managers and architects make when planning and designing a business intelligence system? BI managers and architects generally do […]
October 10, 2013

Predictive analytics is not your father’s BI project, Part 2 – Battle between data completeness and quality

Predictive analytics and data visualization are data-hungry processes. An enterprise data warehouse is often a critical part of the data backbone that these processes crave. IT’s […]
September 24, 2013

Predictive analytics is not your father’s BI project, Part 1- who does what

Once an enterprise gets beyond the hype and sets out to implement predictive analytics, success will depend on how they approach it. As with anything new, our […]
October 26, 2011

Connecting the Dots: An Introduction

When I teach my master’s degree classes I use slides to present the theoretical, and then use workshops to illustrate how the theory applies to design […]
July 27, 2011

Business or Technology: Who’s the Boss?

It’s time to stop getting bossed around by technology.  IT groups too often create their list of projects and priorities based on a logical and mainly […]
June 22, 2011

Pros & Cons of ICC Organizational Models

As we discussed in the last post,  the four organizational models most often used to implement ICCs are: best practices, technology standards, shared services and centralized […]
June 15, 2011

ICC Organizational Models

You have the sponsorship and budget, now how do you set up your Integration Competency Center (ICC)? There are several approaches to organizing the role and […]
June 8, 2011

ICC – Sponsorship, Investments & Organizations

Some of my recent posts have discussed how people, politics and projects have established integration silos throughout an enterprise that are costly, inefficient and inhibit the […]
June 1, 2011

Getting Started with an Integration Competency Center (ICC)

In the last several posts we discussed how critical data governance programs are to the success of EDW, MDM, CDI and really any enterprise-wide integration initiatives. […]
May 25, 2011

Two Titanic Data Governance Mistakes

In the post Getting Down To Business with People and Policies. I discussed the fact that people and policies need to be on the front burner […]
December 6, 2010

Selling database projects internally: business needs trump tech specs

Businesses are awash with ever-increasing amounts of data created in their transaction systems and then used by business executives and workers striving to analyze all of […]
December 9, 2009

The Battle for the Status Quo

It’s a vicious battle. No, I am not talking about the partisan wars between the Democrats and Republicans, but this battle also impedes progress. Nor am […]
August 25, 2009

People, Process & Politics: Pros & Cons of ICC Organizational Models

As we discussed in my last People, Process & Politics post, the four organizational models most often used to implement ICCs are: common practices, technology standards, […]
July 31, 2009

People, Process & Politics: Integration Competency Centers

In our “People, Process & Politics” series we have discussed how non-technical aspects of business intelligence, data integration or data warehousing projects are the critical components of […]
April 3, 2009

More than just “The Usual Suspects” – Doing Due Diligence for DW and BI Tools

The publishing of Gartner’s Magic Quadrants or Forrester’s Waves is eagerly awaited by vendors in many IT categories, particularly those who scope in the “top” quadrant […]
August 7, 2008

Failing to Plan is Planning to Fail, Part 2

No where does the cliche "Failing to Plan is Planning to Fail" ring truer than in regards to testing. First, although everyone knows you have to […]
June 23, 2008

“Failing to Plan is Planning to Fail”, Part 1

Some clichés ring truer with experience and this one is re-enforced by countless DW, BI and performance management projects. Most of these projects have a plan […]
June 12, 2008

Mars (IT) vs Venus (Business): The Latest Round

The “Men Write Code from Mars, Women Write More Helpful Code from Venus” posting in the Wall Street Journal’s Business Technology blog on June 6 produced very […]
March 10, 2008

How to Tap IT’s Hidden Potential

This week’s Wall St. Journal Business Insight section looks at the glass wall between IT and the rest of the company, which can lead to missed […]
May 29, 2007

Ouch! Get Ready — Spreadsheets Are Here To Stay For Business Intelligence

I’m not the only one who thinks that Microsoft Excel spreadsheets are here to stay. (See Microsoft Excel: The King of BI.) In "Ouch! Get Ready […]
March 26, 2007

Technology is easy, people are hard

People, process and governance issues – that’s where companies are spending their time, energy, and money rather than on technology according to Gartner analysts in a […]
January 17, 2007

Marketing BI Solutions to the Business

Technical people often think that delivering great solutions is the key to satisfying business users. It is not. Delivering the solution users want is the key. […]
January 16, 2007

Communication Breakdown: The Achilles’ Heel of BI Projects

What we’ve got here is failure to communicate. – Captain in the 1967 film Cool Hand Luke What is the most likely cause of failed business […]
June 29, 2006

Data Integration Myth #6: We can do this project without the help of the line of business.

You think so, do you? If you don’t work with the business users, how are you going to know their real needs? How will you understand […]
June 22, 2006

Data Integration Myth #5: Because this project will benefit the business users, there’s no need to market it to them.

It’s tempting to ignore this. However, the promise of business results is what gets a project staffed and implemented; therefore, an internal awareness and marketing campaign […]
May 2, 2006

Is it true that IT and users hate each other?

What’s with all the animosity between IT and business users? Christopher Koch provided a summary of the string of hate-posts from Slashdot, where it got so […]
June 12, 2005

IT is from Mars, Business users are from Venus

Have you ever wondered why companies buy software licenses from BI vendors for hundreds or even thousands of “seats” and only use a small fraction of […]
July 13, 2004

Do You Need a Data Integration Center of Expertise (DICE)?

Reining in the proliferation of expensive, redundant data silos requires a methodical approach that includes establishing a data integration center of expertise. In their quest for […]