It's a well-known fact that gathering or, it's more accurate to say, eliciting requirements in BI projects, is a sore subject.
BI doesn't offer classic requirements gathering procedures within an IT project - users often do not know what they want until they see the data and click on the first versions of reports. And that won't change.
By playing into agile development, you take the risk of wasting the resource and not getting a result (going around in circles). These risks can be managed to reduce the negative impact - through the right questions, identifying risks and structuring expectations at an early stage.
There are few in-depth investigations on this subject, BI vendors have little interest in such issues - it is too complicated and doesn't help in any way to sell licenses.
Within our projects, we built guides and instructions for ourselves, it's time to share them with the world - they contain both relatively original things and copies of what has already been heard.
I wanted to call it some kind of ... canvas, but I've got a feeling that it was already used somewhere)
Therefore, now there's a tool called
"Lords of the Boards" - a guide on the steps of report development in corporate BI projects.
This framework is our version of a question bank that BI analysts need to pose to themselves and the customers at different stages of a report development project. It seems to me that focusing on the right questions is the most effective way. A lot depends on this "question bank".
The purpose of the guide is to assist BI analysts:- Accelerate the process of gathering and eliciting customer requirements
- Prevent from stillborn BI projects
- Minimize the execution risks and maximize the effect of a launched BI project
The guide is conceptually related to
Dashboard Canvas, a Roma Bunin's masterpiece, but has a different focus. Although all coincidences are probably not a fluke.
How to use it?- One can open (1) the guide on the second screen during the interview with the customer, make lines on the a4 sheet with a 4x4 grid and make notes during the meeting; (2) use it to check oneself when structuring the received request and planning the project
- Not all topics are applicable to all projects, if this guide somehow helps to structure the project preparation and its management, that's a good start
- Leave comments and feedback – it's a hot-button issue and I probably didn't cover every eventuality.
All this is not yet a full-fledged system methodology. Perhaps this is the next abstraction level, which our colleagues and community experts will head over after they reach the following maturity stages.
In addition to the guide itself, it also includes a set of useful thoughts: