By Mary Anne Hopper, Senior Consultant

It’s not like I spend my weekend and down-time thinking about work but some of the lessons I learn over the weekend apply to Monday thru Friday.   Case in point, my kids recently attended a racing seminar with an Olympic sailing hopeful.     He worked with them for three solid days focusing on boat handling drills.   Some of the kids wanted to know why.   His response – because you have to be able to repeat the basics the same way every time so you can deal with all the things that will be different every time (like wind velocity, wind shifts, waves, other boats, etc).

How does that relate to BI projects?     In order to deliver value to our business partners in the timeframe they expect, we have to be able to execute our projects repeating the basics every time so we can deal with the things that will be different every time.     I hope that sounds familiar.

Two great starting points are the project intake and requirements processes.   I use the phrase ‘starting point’ for a reason.   The intake process defines what work your BI team will be working on and in what order.   After those requests become defined projects, the requirements process (business, data, functional/application) then define what is going to be delivered to the business.   No matter how well defined the design and delivery processes are, the beginning of the cycle is imperative to success.   The table shows some examples of what process components need to be consistent and repeatable and what types of things are likely to change on you.

This is a short example list and by no means all inclusive – there are numerous other examples.   The take-away is to understand that ongoing delivery success starts is dependent on the basics.   And nailing the basics with consistency will allow for more easily handling all the things that continue to change.

Photo provided by John Hopper.

Mary Anne has 15 years of experience as a data management professional in all aspects of successful delivery of data solutions to support business needs.   She has worked in the capacity of both project manager and business analyst to lead business and technical project teams through data warehouse/data mart implementation, data integration, tool selection and implementation, and process automation projects.