10 Mistakes to Avoid in a Business Intelligence Delivery (Part 2/ 5)

Mistake #3: Assuming service provider companies own everything about the successful delivery of the project.

This is yet another critical factor for a successful BI delivery. A service provider who has signed a contract to put the BI project into production definitely has ownership on the delivery. That being said, the delivery cannot be a success without active participation from the client and end users having in each stage and phase of the entire lifecycle. Service providers are specialized consultants who can give you options and best practices, much like a professional home decorator consultant. Because it's your home, you will have to give the consultant your input and exact specifications. If this does not happen, then the decorator will decorate the home according to his assumptions of your likes and dislikes, which you may or may not approve of. And if this happens at the last minute, then not only will you end up paying for the work that has already been done, but you will also invest more time and money on rework. Without active and adequate client involvement at every phase, no BI delivery can ever have an assured success.

 
 

Mistake #4: Bringing in a solution architect halfway into the project and assuming that he/she is going to magically fulfill all the deficiencies.

This is the most common scenario one sees in most of the BI projects. When things are not happening the way they should, the management thinks the immediate remedy is to get a solution architect. What one has to understand is that a solution architect cannot just walk in and wield a magic wand to set things right. The  solution architect s experience will determine how soon he/she can start delivering the value-adds. Also, the time at which you bring in the solution architect is a driving factor for success. Often when it comes to BI architecture, business users are from Mars and IT people are from Venus. To get them to a common platform is in itself a premium skill for a solution architect.

Every BI delivery must have a solution architect with expertise and wide skills in DW and BI. This is vital, as they bring a wealth of knowledge from reference architectures and similar implementations with them. This ready-recon eventually reduces the cost and time to implement technology solutions.

The best time to start their involvement is from the analysis stage itself. If not then, do it at least before you spend a large amount of time exploring technology options and assessing the appropriate solutions. Carefully set expectations of the value a solution architect would deliver. If you decide to engage a solution architect when your data model is near completion and expect the architect to do magic to make a performance-tuned and efficient design, it might be overexpecting, as things would have already crossed certain stages involving a good amount of time and cost. At that stage, again the issue resolution becomes more political than technical.