Program or a project
Determining whether the BI Initiative is a program or a project can be very subjective. Labeling the initiative is not important, but rather understanding its characteristics better to structure your initiative.
Getting ready
Before starting the assessment, it is important to have some general information regarding your initiative, namely:
Intended scope of the BI Initiative
Targeted consumers
Planned deadline dates
Understanding of the type of software and hardware which will be utilized
Resources which may be assigned to the project, both internal and external
How to do it...
The most efficient way to understand your initiative and gather information, is to develop a questionnaire or survey. To do this, you could use any of the standard web tools available to build a survey or a simple spreadsheet.
1. Open a spreadsheet application and create a worksheet called Definition:
2. Create a series of questions which focus on determining if your initiative is a project or a program. Questions should focus on Initiative type, Scope, Support, Integration, and Costing. Some sample questions are as follows:
3. Ensure that your questions only allow a
YesorNoanswer. This solicits direct answers and starts people thinking about the answers.4. Save the spreadsheet as Readiness Assessment.
5. Email the questionnaire to the key supporters of the Business Initiative.
How it works...
Based on the answers from the survey, you can determine whether you have a potential program or a project. A set of general definitions for a program and project are as follows:
A program — This is defined as several interrelated projects that have a goal of improving an organization's performance
A project — This is defined as a unique and temporary construct with a defined beginning and end, to meet a set of goals or objectives
BI Initiatives are normally focused on organizational improvements, or initiatives (regulatory and so on) of some description. These initiatives do not have a set duration, but rather are implemented using a system of measurement and feedback. As long as they attain the objectives (set measurements), they are normally continued.
Note
Determining whether a BI Initiative is a program or a project is an important part of the BI Initiative, because a key success factor is the way it influences the organization, and how the initiative morphs as the environment changes, ensuring long term benefits.
Each project within the BI Initiative should be focused on delivering unique benefits to the organization. These deliverables should be identified and sequenced to ensure that multiple projects or phases can run simultaneously. BI Initiatives are normally mapped to organizational or departmental goals, objectives, and metrics. These metrics are normally evolving and perpetual. The BI Initiative should include continued feedback and improvement to ensure that the program or project remains aligned with the business.
Multiple work packages, subject areas, or rollouts need to be analyzed before development, to understand how the deliverables of one project or phase have an impact on and contribute to subsequent projects or phases.
BI Initiatives rely on a good technical architecture, infrastructure, and integration to be successful. The integration points can easily become projects of their own, given the complexity and the deliverables. It is key to identify these projects early in the process and begin the key foundation infrastructure and integration early in the BI Initiative.
Subject areas can be prioritized and delivered based on costs. Tracking costs and estimates by subject area delivers valuable information to the project. It is important to agree upon and build a standard estimation model to cost a subject area; use a similar means to track expenditure and completion. It is best to start this from the beginning, else trying to manage and reconcile this information after the fact can be cumbersome and time consuming.
Global or multi-site rollouts require you to understand the type of architecture you are putting in place, and the support mechanism for this. Deploying development tools across large networks or geographic locations will have an impact on schedules as you cannot be as efficient. Additional techniques such as remote desktops or access are required for remote locations. Additional support teams or shifts may be necessary to support multi-site implementations. Both of these will affect cost and schedule, and are commonly forgotten within BI Initiatives.
Multi-language requirements not only affect the technical solution but also the business solution. Translating information is costly and time consuming. These factors need to be incorporated into the overall program.
There's more...
Whether you classify your initiative as a program or a multi-phase large project, it is important to realize that you will have multiple streams, and should structure the program or project into smaller modules.
By doing so you have the opportunity for running these smaller modules simultaneously.
Deliverables, templates, and work practices should be efficiently and effectively planned to facilitate reuse, and minimize overhead. By understanding and communicating this early in the lifecycle, you will gain the correct support and awareness.
With the Readiness Assessment you can schedule additional meeting sessions with the necessary stakeholders. The additional sessions include the following:
Overview
Data Source Review
Business Process Review
System Architecture
ETL/ELT Overview
Database Standards
These sessions will give you valuable information to gain insight into your Business Intelligence Initiative, outlining high-level information or gaps. If you are implementing BI applications, you will want to alter the questions to focus more on the pre-defined requirements for the application, and how they will integrate into your environment.
