Michael's BI Space

Most organisations will adopt a divide and conquer approach to all projects.

There are a number of more technical terms used to describe this: iterative, agile & scrum, RAD etc.

These are effective in their focus and delivery, but face some shortcomings for the organisation as a whole as most do not have a 'game plan' or roadmap in place that is realistic and adaptive enough to adapt along with new discoveries, changes in tactics, or shifting requirements and goal posts - not to mention departmental shifts and political impacts.

A new or even maturing BI environment must be adaptive enough to change in midstream re it's direction, and yet not lose sight of a greater plan that has to be amended in line with any possible influence on it (and that includes any departmental changes and project impacts from source / feeder systems).

 

Some interesing posts to this end:

 

 

 

I had some fun times trying to get some scripts going on XI 3.1 --

 

For the BIAR comand line scripts: http://meetthetaylors.com/files/Start_BOE.cmd.txt

To wrap these in a VBS shell:

 

Dim WshShell
Set WshShell = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
WScript.Echo WshShell.CurrentDirectory
WshShell.CurrentDirectory = "C:\Program Files\Business Objects\common\4.0\java\lib\"
WScript.Echo WshShell.CurrentDirectory
WshShell.Run "java -jar biarengine.jar biar.properties"

 

For a really cool VBS editor packed with samples for just about anything: http://www.vbsedit.com/scripts/os/process/procthd/scr_992.asp
 

The critical component that links the business unit to the technical units re BI is the KPI. Proper identification and prioritisation of these metrics is key to ensuring that the focus stays where it should - on deivering usable information as opposed to gathering data and technology.

To this end there are many kpi's and metrics that are industry specific and standard to most organisations - as seen by most packaged applications these days - but there are also sites dedicated to sharing experiences and KPI's

 http://kpilibrary.com/

 

 

 

Sitting in the tech trenches we oft forget the c/overt influences of information on people and processes. We are creatures of habit, and the vastness of the web is constantly undermined by humans falling back into routine and visiting favourite sites.

Once in a while I throw a combination of unlikely terms together and do some random searching just to break the more obvious patterns of acquiring knowledge. "Business Intelligence and Empirical" soon led to

Business Intelligence meets Moral Intelligence Call for Papers for Vol. 10 (01/2009)

The paper can be accessed at the International Review of Information Ehics: http://www.i-r-i-e.net/current_issue.htm

 

Designing a dashboard is like chosing a surfboard - you want optimal performance, with the latest flow design and it must look good and be really effective.

Sometimes you don't really know what you want until you see it - so trolling online stores, visiting numerous retail shops and checking out the boards in use at your local break are par for the course until you narrow down the various choices into a suitable price range (and it must look radical! lol).

 

For dashboards the same rule applies - except most BI dpt's get tasked to emulate an excel spreadsheet that's packed with various tabs and charts etc as a starting point.

 

Look no further - this has to be the largest site of exmples - EVER http://dashboardspy.com/ - the top toolbar lists them in ranges of 1 - 250 etc until a 1000!