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Is the development methodology for BI different than operational development methodology?

Q: Is the development methodology for BI different than operational development methodology? Can we not use waterfall or iterative development methodology?

Sid Adelman's Answer : They are different. Do not use waterfall for BI, use an iterative or spiral approach. Look at The BI Roadmap by Larissa Moss and Shaku Atre.

Larissa Moss' Answer: You definitely cannot use a waterfall methodology. BI projects are much too dynamic with too many unknowns, with ambiguous and constantly changing requirements, with uncertain technology components and other hurdles. BI projects are often understaffed, and the project scopes are usually much too large for the given deadlines. The list of project management challenges on BI projects goes on and on, not to mention all the additional data integration activities that must be performed but are not contained in any waterfall or operational development methodology. BI projects must use an agile development approach and an agile project management approach. Agile development means getting off paper deliverables (as the ones prescribed in waterfall methodologies) and using prototyping techniques for analysis, integration, design, coding, testing, demonstrating, and documenting. Agile project management means developing applications using the software release concept, which means that a project no longer delivers a fully functioning application. Instead the application scope and requested deliverables are divided into multiple software releases. Each software release is equivalent to one project. Each software release produces a partially functioning piece of the whole application. In other words, it will take several software releases (projects) to finish an application. This type of development approach and project management is not supported by any waterfall methodology. Instead, you need an agile, spiral methodology, such as the Business Intelligence Roadmap (ISBN 0-201-78420-3).


Sid Adelman is a principal in Sid Adelman & Associates, an organization specializing in planning and implementing data warehouses, in data warehouse and BI assessments, and in establishing effective data architectures and strategies. He is a regular speaker at DW conferences. Adelman chairs the "Ask the Experts" column on www.dmreview.com. He is a frequent contributor to journals that focus on data warehousing. He co-authored Data Warehouse Project Management and is the principal author on Impossible Data Warehouse Situations with Solutions from the Experts and Data Strategy. He can be reached at (818) 783-9634 or visit his Web site at www.sidadelman.com.

Larissa Moss is founder and president of Method Focus Inc., a company specializing in improving the quality of business information systems. She has more than 20 years of IT experience with information asset management. Moss is coauthor of three books: Data Warehouse Project Management (Addison-Wesley, 2000), Impossible Data Warehouse Situations (Addison-Wesley, 2002) and Business Intelligence Roadmap: The Complete Project Lifecycle for Decision- Support Applications (Addison-Wesley, 2003). Moss can be reached at methodfocus@earthlink.net.

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