BI Project Mangement

8/8/2019 BI Project Mangement

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Table of Content Page Number

1. Introduction 3

2. Business Intelligence 4

3. Project Management 5

4. Business intelligence Governance 55. Phase 1 7

6. Phase 2 9

7. Phase 3 13

8. Phase 4 15

9. Phase 5 18

10. Phase 6 19

11. Holistic overview of the BI solution, project lifecycle and advantages 19

12. Conclusion 22

13. List of References 23

List of figures;

Figure 1: Business intelligence across different organisational functions 4

Figure 2: Stakeholder roles and responsibilities through out Project cycle 6

Figure 3: OLAP Cube 17

Figure 4: Overall BI solution Project lifecycle 19

Figure 5: Completed BI solution 20



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Introduction

The overall benefit s of implementing a Business intelligence solution within an organisation, are

numerous. Over the years Business intelligence (BI) has evolved from a nice to have organisational

system to a must have customised solution which adds value to everyday organisational functions and

operations. As the importance and value adding aspects of BI were realised over the years, organisationsare investing more resources and bigger budgets to the implementation of BI solutions. The research

report will be taking a look at the BI project lifecycle with specific focus on the benefits of BI

implementation phases and overall end product, the completed BI solution.

Business intelligence solutions in a volatile business environment s are systems that add value to the

operational, tactical and strategic functions of an organisation. Value added to business goals, strategy

and operations can be measured when the organisation reaches its set targets and objectives. The

evolution of technology has had a significant impact on how organisations manage information and

knowledge resources. Seamless integration of new systems and solutions into an organisations existing

infrastructure can only be done through proper planning and analysis. Before a new organisational

process is introduced into operations it is quality assured and critically analysed to see if it fits into the

organisations current architectural design. Business intelligence, management information systems and

knowledge management, among others, are organisational initiatives that have to be custom made and

fitted into an organizations current architecture based on identified organisational needs they are

implemented to fulfil.

Report outline

The research report will be taking a look at the project lifecycle and processes involved in the

implementation of a new business intelligence solution. The report will focus on measures and

indicators which are used to prove the benefit and validity of a Business intelligence solution. Eachphase in the BI solution project lifecycle has been given its own specific section. Each section has been

divided into the following sub section;

y The phase and its associated activates

y Phase deliverables and

y Advantages of the associated phase activities

The research report has taken a project management approach to the development of a new BI system

without losing focus on the technical and management aspects of business intelligence. Before the

different project phases are discussed business intelligence is briefly discussed, the subsequent section

takes a look at project management followed by a discussion of BI governance before the detailed

project and phases are discussed. The purpose of the first three sections of the paper is to provide

background as most of the concepts discussed will be used throughout the report. In some instances in

the report reference is made to the first three sections. The subsequent sections of the report will be

taking a look at the different phases within the BI solution project lifecycle. The different lifecycle phases

are the following;



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y Phase 1; Business requirements gathering

y Phase 2; Planning

y Phase 3; Business Analysis

y Phase 4; Design

y Phase 5; Construction

y Phase 6; Implementation

Business intelligence

Business intelligence is defined as the use of various processes, technology and tools used to gain a

better understanding of an organisations internal operations. Business intelligence can be aligned to an

organisations three levels namely; the operational level, tactical and the strategic level. Business

intelligence solutions are mainly used to support decision making on all the three outlined levels. Figure

1 below depicts the use of business intelligence across different organisational levels to reach set

organisational objectives and support decision making.

Figure 1: Business intelligence across different organisational levels.

Business intelligence solutions are mainly used to gain a better understanding of an organisations

internal operations, and access to information and data. Depicted in figure 1 above, business

intelligence solutions enable the delivery of the right strategic, tactical and operational information at

the right time in the right format to support informed decision making. As a decision support tool it is

important that business intelligence solutions house the right data to be analysed across organisational

levels and the delivery of that information when it is needed. As depicted in figure1 above the decisionsupport function of business intelligence ensures that the organisation is able to reach its set goals and

objectives based on overall strategy. For business intelligence solutions to add value to throughout the

organisation it is important that all organisational business functions are aligned and coordinated. For BI

solutions to be effective they should be able to report on the entire organisation and its functions. In an

effective BI solutions all business functions in the organisation do not operate in silos but rather they

collaborate and share valuable information and knowledge. According to Negash (2004) business



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intelligence is used to understand the capabilities available in an organisation and further improve on

timeliness and quality of inputs in the decision process. Based on the argument presented by Negash

(2004), business intelligence solutions once implemented and designed according to an organisations

needs should enable decision makers to get a holistic view of the current organisational state and use

the information gained to leverage the organisations strengths.

Project Management;

According to Phinney (2006) A project is defined as a temporary endeavour undertaken to accomplish a

unique product or service with a defined start and end points and specific objectives that, when

attained, signify completion. In the definition of project management provided above, the unique

product or service in this context refers to the building and implementation of a business intelligence

solution. Defined start and end points refer to the determined project initiation and close-out dates

which will be determined by the project team based on the project plan. Specific project objectives in

this context refer to set project milestones and phase deliverables which are attained after every project

phase. The implementation of a BI solution in any organisation can be viewed as project which mainly

consists of a dedicated project team who will ensure that the solutions is built and implemented

according to the set goals and objectives stakeholders aim to achieve with the complete solution.

BI Governance

According to Broadley(2003), more than half of all BI projects, either fail due to, being incomplete, the

solution fails to deliver on promised features and capabilities. Broadley (2003) goes further to argue that

failure of BI projects is due to a number of contributing factors, with the following being some of the key

factors;

y Failure to recognize BI projects as cross organisational business initiative

y Unengaged business sponsors

y Unavailable or unwilling business representatives

y Lack of skilled and available staff

y No software release concept

y No work breakdown structure

y Failure to understand the necessity for and use of Meta data

As much as a number of BI projects do fail it is important to take into consideration the factors which

may act as barriers to BI solution development and implementation. With the above mentioned factors

taken into consideration, Gutierrez (2009) argues that an establishment of a BI governance process in

the organisation before project commencement. Gutierrez (2009) goes further to point out that a BI

governance committee is needed to ensure that the project is aligned with the organisations strategic

goals and objectives. Gutierrez (2009) defines BI governance as a process of prioritizing BI requests

based on a number of criteria such as;



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y Project Return of Investment

y Organizational Budget

y Team expertise

y People availability

y Infrastructure capacity and Organizational Politics

Establishment of a BI governance team can be viewed as a process of providing a framework by which

proper resources can be aligned based on the projects priorities. Gutierrez (2009) further argues that a

BI governance process will establish proper change management and training policies that facilitate user

adoption and promote overall use of the BI solution before and after implementation. When

establishing the BI governance team it is important that stakeholders are identified, to compose the

governance team. It is important to note that individuals in the BI governance team may also be a part

of the BI solution project team (mentioned in phase two of the project process). When establishing the

BI governance team it is important that every business area within the organisation is represented. The

business area representatives will be responsible for providing a high level explanation of the impact of

project and change management to the governance team. A more detailed role of the business area

representative is outlined in phase two, the project plan, the IT representative (see phase two) and the

CFO office. The role of the CFO office will be to ensure the project does not exceed its allocated budget.

Figure two below provides a high level view of how the different BI governance team members will

interact through the project lifecycle.

Figure 2: Stakeholder roles and responsibilities through out Project cycle (Gutierrez 2009)



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Phase 1; Project Justification and Initial Analysis

The implementation of a BI solution in an organisation may stem from a number of important business

issues, ranging from a new consumer trend, an operational problem or even the lack of information to

support decision making. The first phase of the BI solution project is the gathering of stakeholder

requirements for the proposed BI solution. Before requirements can be gathered a proposal has to bewritten by the project initiator to before commencement of requirement gathering. The first phase of

the project is broken down into the following activities;

y Business case assessment

y Justification

y Business analysis

y Cost benefit analysis

y Risk assessment and

y Resource acquisition

According to Hanningan (2006) the first activity in phase one is the business case assessment where the

business problem or opportunity is defined. The need for a BI solution mostly arises from an indentified

business problem or an opportunity, whatever the event was that highlighted the need for a BI solution,

it has to be defined as a means of testing the feasibility of implementing a BI solution to either solve the

problem or taking advantage of an identified market opportunity. Once the business assessment is

completed the justification process commences, business justification is where the project initiator

justifies the need for a BI solution based on the business assessment to the set BI governance team. The

next activity is business analysis where additional organisational problems the BI solutions will solve.

During the business analysis the following are determined;

y The proposed BI solutions data, i.e. what kind of data should it contain?

y The internal data and external data needed to enhance decision support

y Identification of the BI solution user community and

y Data sources

Every organisation needs to make a profit for it to thrive and continue operating. The cost benefit of the

BI solution will need to be done based on the organisational problems the solution aims to solve and the

business risks it will negate. Cost benefit justification is followed by the risk assessment. According to

Phinney (2006) every project has a risk which in some cases may have a negative impact on the entire

project or activities. The risk identification activity of phase one is a precautionary step taken to ensure

that all risk is indentified and planned for before it actually happens. After the risk has been indentified

it is important that contingency planning is done to mitigate or eliminate indentified risk. Risk variables

span from finance, resource allocation, technology and project complexity. During the risk assessment it

is important that the project initiator presents the risk assessment and proposed mitigation measures in

this phase of the project. Risk identification may not be completed entirely in this phase of the project, it

is a process that needs to be reviewed at the commencement of every phase to ensure that the project



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and associated activities continue to run smoothly within projected time frames with all contingency

plans are in place based on the next phases identified risk.

Phase 1 deliverables;

The main deliverable for the first phase is a business case assessment report which details the following;

y Strategic business goals in relation to the proposed BI solution

y Goals and objectives of the proposed BI solution

y Statement of the business need

y Detailed explanation of how the BI solution will satisfy the business need

y Consequences of not addressing indentified business need and possible missed opportunities

y Cost-benefit analysis to the CFO office

y Risk assessment and recommendations

The business case assessment document is an important document in the project lifecycle as it will act

as a motivator to key stakeholders in the BI governance team on the importance of implementing a BI

solution in the organisation. For new systems to be implemented especially ones that could have a

major benefit to the entire organisation, it is important they are motivated and stakeholder buy in is

obtained before the commencement of the project.

Advantages;

In the first phase of the project the project initiator after identifying a business need for a BI solution

explains in detail why the solution is needed and what business needs it will solve, leverage on and what

threats it will negate. Before any project is given funding and resources there has to be management

buy in. When key stakeholders are consulted the benefit from this stage would be resource allocation

and managerial support. One of the other main benefits for a business case assessment report is that, it

will ensure to a large extent that the proposed BI solution is in line with the organisations strategic

goals and objectives. BI solutions support informed decision making and therefore the solution has to

support the direction the organisation plans on taking in the next five to ten years. Organisational

alignment of resources namely; technology, human resources and information is important in strategy

implementation; the same applies to a BI solution. The proposed BI solution has to support and

complement the current infrastructure and architecture that is in place for it to add value to daily and

strategic goals of the organisation. The risk assessment element of the business case assessment

provides an overview of the risks associated with the proposed project. By identifying possible risks and

making provision for unidentified risks ensures that the BI solution development and implementationplan is prepared for with all associated risk planned for without compromising the solutions quality and

deliverables. In project management risk management through contingency planning is important

before the project can begin. By planning ahead for risk, project failure is greatly reduced as contingency

plans are in place.



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Phase 2 Project Planning

Once the business case assessment report has been accepted by stakeholders the project reaches phase

two, planning. According to Phinney (2006) projects fail because of poor planning. To ensure project

meets set objectives and contributes to the organisations strategic goals it is important that proper

planning is done. Before proper project planning is done the project team is appointed based on the BIsolution requirements and proposed technology based on the business case assessment report. In some

contexts the project team may even include the BI governance team with a specialised project team at

the core. The project team is usually comprised of a number of individuals who will all be responsible for

activities and project phases. The most important people who need to be appointed in the project team

are the following;

y The Project manager

y ETL developer

y Data Manager

y Business Analyst and

y Different business functional area representatives

The project manager will be responsible and accountable to the governance team for the overall project

management activities which include;

y Ensuring the project is on time

y Budget and resource allocation

y Head Project planning

y Accountability to stakeholders and

y Project administration

The ETL developer; the ETL developer will be responsible for defining the ETL process and aiding

applications from source systems to the main data warehouse.

Data Manager; the data managers focus is on the enterprise data level with the main task of ensuring

that meta data and business rules are treated, document and used in a concise manner during the

development of the BI solution. The data managers role is to prepare the basis for the use of business

data throughout the entire organisation (Janus2009).

Business Analyst; the business analysts main responsibilities include the analysis of all work ranging

from retrospective reporting and analysis pertaining to project activities.

Different Business function representatives have to be part of the project to ensure that their concerns

regarding data access after the solutions implementation have been addressed.

The outlined roles are not exhaustive of the project team but they provide some of the key individuals

that have to be part of the team to ensure that that solution meets the set goals and objectives



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Project planning is divided into two main categories, technical and non technical infrastructure planning.

Before the technical infrastructure is planned the project team has to conduct a non technical planning

which most of stems from gathering requirements from indentified end user organisational

departments and stakeholders. As part of the planning phase requirements have to be gathered from

the affected organisational business functions before the type of technology to be used to build the

solution are identified. Before requirements are gathered from individual business units the

organisational business architecture has to be evaluated in contrast to the set goals and objectives of

the proposed BI solution. BI solutions have an impact on the entire organisation and it is important that

all business units within the organisation are involved so the solution will benefit the entire

organisation. According to Lampa (2005) when gathering the requirements from the different business

units it is important that the following are kept in mind;

y The business opportunity the BI solution is trying to take advantage of

y The business problem the BI solution is trying to eliminate or negate

y The business functional areas involved

y The organisational units affected and

y What current applications will be implicated

Requirements from different business functional units can be gathered using a number of different

techniques, for the purpose of the report the lay of the land technique will be discussed. The lay of the

land technique involves the following activities; (Lampa 2005).

y One on one interviews with key IT stakeholders

y Preparation of a detailed interview script

y Taking down of interview notes

y Requesting a review of interview notes for accuracy

Once requirements have been gathered from the different user groups the organisational architecture

needs to be evaluated to see how the proposed BI solution will fit in, as part of the non technical

planning.

Technical Planning

When the non technical planning is completed the project team needs to evaluate the technical

planning and determine if the identified applications in the business case assessment will work based on

the requirements gathered. Analysing the current technology infrastructure within the organisation

involves the following activities;

y Describing the current infrastructure

y Planning the future infrastructure based on the proposed BI solution and its set objectives

y Middleware to be used to the data base management system

y Data base management system requirements



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Description of the current information technology infrastructure will provide the project team with an

overall view of what the infrastructure looks like and provide enough information on how they will plan

the future infrastructure. Middleware platform planning is the planning of the runtime software to be

used in the proposed BI solution. There are two main categories of middleware distributed logic middle

ware and data management middleware. Distributed logic middleware refers to, applications that

support the communication of different programmes between two pieces of custom application code.

Data management middleware then connects an application or data base management system on one

platform with another data base management system running on a different platform (Hannigan 2006).

The next activity is determining the DBMS platform. Based on analysis of the current infrastructure the

DBMS platform is planned for, the following key objectives are determined and set.

y How the DBMS will handle queries and how data will be loaded

y Database scalability is determined

y How the data base will be integrated into the current infrastructure

y The network support needed to support the proposed database

y Administrative support

y In future how will the database be expanded?

y Hardware scalability

y Q uery performance

y Load processes and performance

y Security parameters and

y Data dictionaries

Technical infrastructure

y Data volumesy Update frequency

y Data access platforms

y Number of reports and queries

y Expected number of people to access the database

y Number of tools and applications to be used and their specification

y Number of data feeds for the proposed BI solution

(Hanigan 2006)

Once all technical and non technical infrastructure has been determined the next activity is to plan the

project in detail based on technical, non technical and the business requirements gathered from the

different business functional units. The project plans main aim is to manage the entire BI project. The

project plan comprises of the following;

y Project Scope

y Timeframes

y Milestones



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y Budget

y Constraints and

y Change management

Once the project plan is completed the project charter is signed. According to Taylor (2009) the project

charter is a document sometimes referred to as a project overview statement (POS), the aim of theproject charter is to recognize the project. The project charter includes the set project scope, objectives

and constraints. The importance of the project charter is to clearly define stakeholder roles and project

deliverables. With the project charter in place the next activity in the second phase is planning in further

detail how the BI solution will be built and implemented. In this part of the planning phase the work

break down structure is formulated together with task dependencies and resource dependencies.

Phase two deliverables;

y Business requirements

y Technical infrastructure report

y Project Plan

y Project Charter

Advantages of adequate planning

Planning is an integral part before embarking on a new project. Planning covers most aspects of

resource allocation, work breakdown amongst many others. In phase two of the project technical and

not technical aspects of the project are carefully planned for with all major key areas addressed and

needed resources allocated. One of the most important components of the second phase of the project

is the acquisition of the project team. The advantage of hiring experts in different BI solution

components ensures that the overall BI solution does perform its required tasks. A multi skilled projectteam also will provide the project manager with an overall view of how the entire system components

and tools will integrate to enable optimal BI solution performance. The presence of each business

functional area representatives enables the project team to cater for their data and information

management needs before the solution is implemented. Involvement of business functional

representatives also provides the team with an end-user perspective on the proposed BI solution. The

technical and non technical planning phases of the proposed BI solution provides the project team with

much needed information on where in the existing infrastructure will the BI solution fit in and how it will

be adequately aligned with strategic objectives. The current technical infrastructure is as important as

the non technical infrastructure as the two complement each other. Careful planning for the BI solution

taking into account the two infrastructures and enables the project team an indication of how thesolution fits into the organisation. Resource planning in terms of the work break down structure, setting

of project milestones and taking into account project constraints mitigates the risk of project failure as

all the project team has carved a clear roadmap for project implementation. During the planning phase

requirements form end users are gathered, through requirements gathering the project team gets end

user perspective and how they would like to access and retrieve data this provides the project team with



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adequate information to take into account the technical implications of their requirements with all

experts in the project team collaborating to achieve cater for end user needs and requirements.

Phase 3 Business analysis

In phase two the project plan was clearly identified in phase three most of the outlined activities

determined in the previous phase will be carried out by the different project team members. Before

phase three activities can commence it is important that the project manager manages the project

scope. When new projects are undertaken by the organisation scope creep may occur resulting in the

project losing its main focus. When managing he project and guarding against scope creep the project

manager has to document project specific requirements, input from the project team and create the

application requirements documents based on outlined requirements.

The second activity associated with the third phase of the project is data analysis before application and

data base construction can begin. In the first activity of phase three the data manager has to conduct

organisational data analysis. Data analysis is defined as the practice of ordering and organising raw data

so that useful information is extracted, the key process of organizing the data understands what the

data does and does not contain. It is the task of the data manager in the project team to determine data

source system through data analysis and bring the business data together from identified data sources.

Once the data source systems have been identified the data manager then performs the data

verification process of ensuring that no data is duplicated, data is correctly named and archived and

properly defined. The next activity the data manager then has to conduct is data cleansing. According to

Chapman (2005) data cleansing is defined as a process to determine inaccurate, incomplete or

unreasonable data and then improving the quality through correction of detected errors and omissions,

the process may include; format checks, completeness checks, reasonableness checks, data reviews and

data assessments among other techniques. Chapman (2005) continues to argue that data cleansing is

an essential part of the information management process, it is an important step as it ensures that error

is prevented which costs less and has proved efficient in comparison to correcting data at a later stage.

The next activity associated with data analysis is the Meta data repository analysis. Meta data can be

defined as keywords that describe the content of a file or a document. Meta data is useful in

categorizing and managing content. A Meta data repository is used to ensure that data housed in a data

warehouse is easily retrievable. Meta data can be extracted from files and existing documents through

the use of various tools and applications. Once the data has been identified and cleansed the next step

is the identification of the ETL process requirements which entails, how the data will be extracted and

loaded into the proposed BI solution.

The next activity associated with phase three of the BI solution project is application prototyping.

Application prototyping is an activity undertaken to ensure that the outlined application requirements

will work on the proposed system. Application prototyping is not an essential process and in most cases

it depends on project and budget constraints. According to Hannigan (2006) application prototyping

can prove to be effective in validating application requirements. Applications can be prototyped in one

of the following ways;



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y Application Demo

y Mock-up

y Proof of concept

y Conceptual design

Phase Three deliverables are the following;

y Detailed project work break down structure

y Applications requirements document

y Data cleansing requirements

y Data analysis

y ETL requirements

Organisational advantages of business analysis and Data modelling

Organisations have to manage vast amounts of data originating form different functional areas, the

challenge for organisations is to make sense of the data and derive valuable organisational information

that will contribute to making the organisation a profit. The important of data modelling in the third

phase of the project is that it enables database developers understand and meet set requirements

during the physical development of the database. Data modelling of BI solutions enables the system to

meet numerous data challenges, including the delivery of the correct information and data to relevant

end users. Other advantages of adequate data modelling is the reduction in development time of the

entire systems are during data modelling sources systems and the associated data they house are better

understood. Data modelling also has the following advantages;

y Increased accuracy of BI results as applications and tools identified are fine tuned to meet data

volumes and requirements based on information gained through the understanding of source

systems.

y By conducting data modelling solution developers and the project team gain a better

understanding of the data the organisation has.

Without proper data modelling the BI solution will not be able to add value to organisational functions,

the delivery of intelligence and identification of key organisational trends and current status to a large

extent depends on the analysis and access of data. The Metadata repository and overall data modelling

enable data access analysis and retrieval. Applications to be used in the proposed BI solution need to be

planned for and documented. By reviewing and identifying relevant applications through prototyping

and testing BI developers will be able to get a view of the applications will communicate with each other

to add value before they are implemented.



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Phase four; BI solution design

According to Cimono (2010) a database is a collection of data that is usually organised, computer based

and supports retrieval. Hannigan (2006) defines a BI database as a high performance data retrieval

database geared towards supporting a wide range of queries and tasks. Hannigan (2006) continues to

argue that a BI databases design is driven by access and usage throughout the entire organisation, withdata derived from current internal or external data sources. To support organisational wide access,

information and knowledge support organisational data bases are usually enormous with vast amounts

of current and previous data ready for analysis. When the database is designed there are a number of

factors that need to be taken into consideration namely;

y Data access requirements need to be reviewed

y Design of the target BI database and

y Development of the database maintenance procedures

The above mentioned factors need to be considered before the blueprints of the database are

constructed and the necessary applications and tools are obtained. To consider the mentioned factors

and taking the gathered requirements into consideration the process of designing and constructing the

BI solution is as follows;

y The design of Dimensional data model

y ETL Process Design

y Design OLAP dimensions and Cubes

y Design Analytics and Reports

According to Yost and Nealon (1997) the dimensional data model refers to the design of a relational

database model for organizing and accessing Metadata. During this activity of the design phase theproject team designs blueprint of how the main data warehouse will communicate with data marts from

various business functional areas. The number of data marts in the organisation has a significant

influence on the structure of the data model, either a de-normalized/simplified structure of a

normalized data model. The next activity in phase four is the ETL design. According to Veerman and

Dickinson (2005) the ETL process exists to support the reporting and analytical requirements of the

proposed BI solution and it needs to be designed and implemented with the supporting role in mind.

The ETL process is a vital process in the data warehouse environment as it consolidates and normalises

data from source data bases to the data warehouse environment. Factors that the project team needs

to take into consideration during the ETL process design are the following;

y Timing

y Performance

y The accuracy of processing

y Support

y Management

y Scalability and



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y Extensibility of the design

Based on the support function of the ETL process Veerman and Dickinson(2005) argue that the following

are the primary objectives for the ETL design;

Administration;

Depending on the proposed BI solutions infrastructure the administrative function should be taken into

consideration. The Project team should design an ELT process that allows fro effective administrative

support that enables; the tracking and reporting of ETL Metadata. Tracking and reporting of ETL

Metadata enables a holistic picture of state processing for troubleshooting purposes enabling the

isolation of issues and fast resolution.

Dynamic Configuration

The dynamic configuration of the ETL process will provide flexibility of the ETL process based on

changing business and technical requirements. Dynamic configuration also enables a data warehouse

environment that is suitable for a large support and development team.

Platform Integration

Platform integration refers to designing an ETL process that would be able to interact with multiple tiers

of the BI solution namely; security access, proposed ICT infrastructure, relational and OLAP structures

and the reporting and analysis tools that harvest the data (Veerman and Dickinson 2005).

Design OLAP dimensions and Cubes

According to Berry (2007) data is critical to a successful BI solution and multidimensional cubes aim to

uncover latent insights within the data. Berry (2007) continues to argue that well designed OLAP cubes

will allow data analysis from various perspectives with each cube having a particular role to play in the

organisations overall BI solution (See figure 3 below) . From Berrys perspective on the design of OLAP

cubes, this activity in the fourth phase of the project is one of the most important as an ineffective and

oversimplified design of OLAP cubes will result in end users struggling to analyse huge amounts of data.

According to Berry (2007) when cubes are designed it is important to take the following into

consideration;

y The Cube has to model the business process it represents;

y When designing the cubes to be used in the BI solution it is important that the business process

engineer and the end-user representative group are present. Developers design and build cubes

from their own perspective which in most cases differs from the end user perspective. The

business process engineer and end user representative group will be able to provide the project

team with a perspective of how they would analyse data based on the process engineers

perspective of the organisation.

y Ensure correct Cube dimensionality



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y Each cube in a BI solution has different dimensions, it is important that when the cube is

designed and eventually constructed that each dimension has a purpose and that it achieves

that purpose.

y Flat Hierarchies: When designing and constructing cubes it is important to consider the types of

dimensions that end users will get the most value out of. Flat hierarchies are generally a bad

idea as they may not provide the end user with data summaries and simplifications.

y Ensure designed cubes are scalable and that they do perform. The final phase of cube design is

designing the aggregations that will be used in the cubes.

Figure 3: OLAP Cube

Depicted in figure 3 above is an example of an OLAP cube which represents an organisations business

processes. The bottom part of the cube represents the organisations different functional areas withdimensions and product lines. The different dimensions in the cube house different types of data end

users need for analysis and report generation.

Design Analytics and Reports

According to Johnson and Jones (2008) the analytics and reporting design provide a view of how end

users will be able to access and analyse data. As with the initial development phase, the project team

need to gather end user requirements on what they would prefer their reports and dashboards to

contain, this includes, dates, data and the level of detail. The type of data that end users need their

reports to contain will to a large extent influence the type of analytical tools to be used in the system.

Once the analytics and reports have been designed the project team needs to determine the delivery

methods for reports and dashboards. According to Few (2006) when designing the reports and analytics

of the BI solution it is important that the project team takes the following into consideration;

y Exceeding the boundaries of a single screen

y Supplying inadequate context for data

y Displaying excessive detail or precision



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y Expressing measures indirectly

y Choosing inappropriate media of display

y Introducing meaningless variety

y Using poorly designed display media

y Arranging required data incorrectly

y Cluttering the screen with useless decoration

Phase four deliverables;

y Database design

y ETL Process Design

y Meta Data repository

Design phase advantages

The ETL process is an important process in the data warehouse environment as it pulls data from source

systems. The adequate performance of ETL in the data warehouse has an impact on the speed of

information retrieval and access. When the ETL process is carefully designed taking all factors into

consideration will enable fast system performance. OLPA cubes provide data and information analysis

and retrieval, careful design of OLAP cubes and performance will enable end users to access and analyse

data from multiple perspectives. The design and report design phase is not a static process as end users

may need to view different entities in a report delivered to them, yet including it as one of the activities

in phase four enables the project team to get a sense of how end users prefer report formats. According

to Ritacco, Carver and Bendel (2007) BI enables your organization to track, understand, and manage

your business in order to maximise enterprise performance. When reports, analytical tools and OLAP

cubes are adequately designed data retrieval and analysis is enabled to add value to the organisation.

Design of BI solution components before implementation is important as all factors which could have an

adverse effect on the solution are carefully considered and addressed before the solution is

implemented.

Phase 5; Development

Deliverables from phase four of the project provide the project team with the construction blueprints

for BI solution. The first model to be developed is the data warehouse where all the organisational

information will be housed. Once the data warehouse has been developed the ETL process is developed

including the applications and tools needed in the process. The application development is the second

activity to be developed, applications are developed based on approved prototypes and finalised design.Application design can be done in parallel with the ETL development process. Once the ETL process and

applications have been developed the Metadata repository is developed. During this phase of the

project there are a number of software development methodologies that can be used to develop the BI

solution applications. Once the development process has been completed, testing has to be conducted

to ensure that the developed solutions meet the requirements and perform the necessary tasks. The

testing phase also ensures that bugs and system errors are detected before the solution goes live.



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Phase 6: Project Close-out and solution Implementation

Once the solution has been tested, meets requirements and has passed quality assurance, the project

team may impalement the BI solution. Solution implementation can be done in one of the following

ways; Plunge installation, Parallel installation and Pilot installation. The most recommended

implementation technique is pilot installation where the solution is piloted in one business area todetermine how well it meets end user expectation. Once the solution has been implemented using

either of the above mentioned software implementation techniques, the project team hands over the BI

solution to the BI governance team. Enterprise wide BI solution implementation of the solution involves

providing end-users access to housed data and providing the necessary training on how to use it.

According to Klee (2010) the training of end users on how to use a particular system happens in two

main ways, either by outsourcing the training or conducting it in house, depending on how the

organisation acquired the solution. In the event that a decision support solution or system is

implemented organisation wide it is important that training material is formulated to provide training,

to executives/senior management and the workforce. During application and solution testing it is

important that the project team documents tricks and tips on how to access data through short cuts.Once the solution has been rolled out support functions may begin. BI solution support functions include

setting up end-user help desk and database back up. After implementation and setting up of support

functions the project team documents the entire project experience, a lesson learnt document, which

will enable the team to reflect on the project and at the same time contribute to the organisations

corporate memory.

Holistic overview of the BI solution, Project lifecycle and advantages

Figure 4: Overall BI solution Project lifecycle

Phase 1: Business Requirements Gathering

Phase 2: Project Planning

Phase 3 Business Analysis

Phase 4 BI solution design

Phase 5

Development

Phase 6 BI solution Implementation



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The research report has taken the systems development lifecycle approach to discuss the project

lifecycle of the BI solution. Depicted in figure 4 above is the overall project lifecycle discussed

throughout the report. BI solution have an impact on more than just the technological infrastructure of

an organisation, it also has implications on the content, data, information and knowledge management

mechanisms of an organisation. With so many disciplines and functional areas implicated it is important

that the approach taken to develop and implement the solution takes into account all the technical and

non technical aspects affected by solution implementation and longevity. Throughout each of the BI

solution project lifecycle phases there has been high end user involvement with the presence of

technical experts in the project team. The collaboration of experts and end users within the project

team enables mutual understanding of technical and non technical factors which could act as

constraints and enablers to the implementation of the BI solution. Collaboration of experts and end

users also enables developers and data modellers to understand data analysis and content retrieval

from the end user perspective thus adding value to the end product. Figure 4 below depicts a complete

BI solution.

Figure 5: BI solution

Figure 5 above depicts a complete BI solution. BI solutions, once customised and developed based on

overall organisational strategy and architecture will have a number of advantages and add value to theorganisations internal operations. BI solutions main advantage to an organisation is to support and

enable informed decision making, with information delivered and analysed in a timely manner within a

given context. The tools and processes used to develop a BI solution to a large extent have an influence

on how timely, accurate data is extract analysed to enable informed decision making. The development

and selection of relevant applications, tools and processes to be included in the solutions development

have to be customised to an organisations architecture and infrastructure with high user involvement



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for the solution to add value to internal organisational processes. According to Ritacco, Carver and

Bendel (2007) a good decision is defined as, a decision that enables an organisation to move closer to its

set strategic goals and objectives. On every level of the organisation resources and departments are

aligned to achieve the organisations strategic goals. BI solutions are when aligned to an organisations

key strategic goals and objectives enable decision making that will in fact enable the organisation to

move towards it goals and objectives. A further explanation on how strategically aligning BI with an

organisations strategy is, BI enables management at each organisational level to view how their

decisions and actions impact overall organisational strategy. According to Ritacco, Carver and Bedel

(2007) one of the key characteristics of a BI solution is a single point of access, this means a single

gateway to information and data access, based on the internal and external organisational

environments. By providing a single access point to organisational data and information end users are

not confused on which portal to enter to access data related to a specific subject matter or

organisational function. Single point of access also enables end users without technical know how of

data structures and data relationships to extract data and analyse it for report generation, effective BI

solutions provide easy access to data using graphical easy to understand graphical interfaces. In phase

two of the BI solution lifecycle end users are part of the project team, as mentioned this enables the BI

solution developers and designers to build user friendly user interfaces which end users will be able to

understand and use efficiently.

For strategic decision makers to view a holistic picture of an organisation it is important that the data

used to develop reports and in key performance indicators originates for data marts which are found

throughout the organisation. In figure 5 above in can be seen that data is pulled from multiple source

systems and finally analysed in the presentation layer of the BI solution. According to Ritacco, Carver

and Bendel (2007) it is important that organisational reports to strategic decision makers enable the

tracking, understanding of organisational data from all organisational business functional areas.

Timely access to data and information housed in the data warehouse environment is important in an

organisation as information and data that are not timely may result in a missed organisational

opportunity of even a risk that could have a negative impact on profitability. In phase four of the project

lifecycle applications are prototyped and designed to increase solution efficiency. The benefit of design

and prototyping enables developers to see the impact of the system before it is implemented to test

efficiency on data and information retrieval and dissemination.

One of the overall benefits of a BI solution is lowered costs through the improvement of operational

efficiency as each organisational level is able to make informed decisions. BI solutions also eliminate the

backlog of reporting and delays, this is done through end user freedom to create and analyse data based

on their immediate requirements. In figure 5 above data and information are accessed and retrieved in

multiple formats.



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Conclusion

BI solution development is not an easy exercise; organisational human resources, software and budget

allocation all have to be taken into account when a BI solution is developed. The project management

approach used to discuss the BI solution project lifecycle ensures that important end users

requirements, development and application phases are not skipped or overlooked before the solution isdeveloped and implemented. Each of the outlined project phases which were divided into different

section, discussed unique elements and inputs into the overall project lifecycle. The first three section of

the report discussed the important concepts which were discussed in the paper, namely; Business

intelligence, project management and BI governance. Each of the main concepts was used to provide

background and reference throughout the report. The sub sequent sections within the paper discussed

the BI solution project lifecycle in further detail discussing each of the different phases and their

associated activities. The last section of the report aimed to provide a holistic overview of the BI solution

and its benefits based on previously discussed project phases.



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Yost, M and Nealon, J. (1997). Using a dimensional data warehouse to standardize survey and census

Metadata. National Agricultural Statistics service, U.S. Department of Agriculture.

BI Project Mangement

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