Best Practices
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THInKInG IT THrouGH
BI Best Practices: oroughly ink It rough rough max T. rssell Avoid an amush of your bI project y thinking through every imaginale—and imagina le—and unimagin unimaginale—detail. ale—detail.
max T. rssell is rssell is the owner of Max and Max Communications. He works behind
BI expert Alexis was hired by a nationwide adoption agency to build a dashboard for user management. e IT director told her during the interview that if this first project went well, the CIO would approve a cautious BI expansion throughout the organization—under Alexis’
the scenes to promote pr omote individuals and projects in a variety of industries. [email protected]
leadership. e IT director listened to Alexis’ BI philosophy, approved her methodical approach to the dashboard design, and then wished her well. Several days into the job, Alexis hit a brick wall. e CIO, who who knew just enough about data architecture to make himself dangerous, stubbornly disagreed with her approach. e project was destined to be a headache to the end because Alexis had failed to anticipate one variable—that someone might disagree with her architecture. A successful BI plan depends on doing many things right, but certain unanticipated details can cause painful interruptions or even kill k ill a project. It’s worth your team’ tea m’ss time to develop a vivid imagination to discover surprises that could ambush your plan.
navigate i Y mid You don’ don’tt want executives or users to see you floundering because of a detail you didn’t expect or know about. at’s why you and your team must imagine your way through every conceivable and inconceivable detail of show-stopping significance.
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Consider this non-BI example of an environment in which various details deta ils could make or break your efforts— effort s— the crawl space under my house. It’s It’s very difficult d ifficult to navigate. More than once I have crawled through the
to do it the CIO’s way rather than wear herself out in repeated arguments with him. By then, she had lost trust with the IT director, who felt he had no choice but to deliver what the CIO would eventually demand—a
fog of spiderwebs while squeezing past one tight, muddy space after another. A building contractor said it’s the worst crawl space he’s he’s ever worked in.
dashboard that would never do what the adoption agency needed. e blame would fall on the consultant, Alexis.
at’s why I do each repair in my mind before before I go under the house. I do not want want to have to start over.
One question would have spared Alexis months of anguish: “Who else will be involved in deciding how this project will be done?” e result of not asking the question was, in her words, “a BI failure.”
Fixing a leaking water pipe may require: Pliers, a drill and drill bits, a hammer, a pry bar, a flashlight and trouble light, screwdrivers, nails and screws, a sled for carrying equipment, wire to support the pipe, wire cutters, a hat to keep spiderwebs off my head, extension cords to allow me to crawl as far as possible without getting lost, a face mask, a cloth to clean my hands, a foam pad to lie on, a plastic bottle to support my head while lying on my back, gloves, and safety glasses to keep particles out of my eyes. If I fail to anticipate even one procedure or forget a tool, I might have to make the miserable journey back to the crawl space opening, pull myself out, find the right tool, return to the opening, and crawl back to the trouble spot. I don’t always have the heart to go back.
It’s worth wor th your team’ team’ss time to develop a vivid imagi imagination nation to discover surprises that could ambush your plan. Aticipatig Pess f Iece Now let’s return to the problem Alexis faced with the dashboard. Neither she nor the IT director had involved the adoption agency’s CIO in discussions about their approach to the dashboard’s design. Alexis finally decided
at question would have changed everything by giving her a chance to schedule a meeting with the CIO (and any other decision makers) to set realistic expectations. If the CIO still insisted on a faulty dashboard, Alexis could bow out of the job. She had no interest in doing things the wrong way! Furthermore, straight talk prior to being hired might have been more persuasive, persua sive, building the t he CIO’s CIO’s confidence in Alexis’s skill as a true expert who would not stand silently by and let the agency a gency waste money.
Aticipatig the rte Sometimes details go unseen because they seem too tiny to worry about. I’ve found myself in uncomfortable situations when I incorrectly assumed that an electrical outlet was within reach rea ch of the power cord on my presentation equipment, or that a projection screen would be available. ese are easy mistakes to make. ey are also easy to avoid if you are willing to think through the details of your plan. Imagine that you’re at a BI meeting when the entire team agrees that the first step of the planning phase is to connect three department leaders’ computers so they can monitor and discuss the same set of planning data. You ask, “Who is in charge charg e of providing the router to make that happen?” It sounds like a petty question to your teammates—until you explain why you’re asking. A certain employee in the central office moves as slowly as she possibly can when-
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ever anything of importance depends on her approval. Pulling a router out of the locked cabinet and assigning it to the BI team is simple enough, but her modus operandi is to control others by moving movi ng at a pace that’s just slow
supervisor ahead of time. You would have been able to present her with “what-if” scenarios and ask what impact your project would have on the floor’ flo or’ss operation. You very possibly could have avoided the breach in protocol. At the
enough to frustrate them and remind them that they need her.
very least, you would have built rapport with the supervisor and others whom you could add to your list of trusted “informants”—people who can help keep an eye on the effectiveness of your business solutions.
Because you asked the right question and anticipated a problem, a BI team member can notify the central office manager that a router is needed ASAP, preventing a miniscule variable from delaying your initiative for a ridiculous 72 hours, as has happened to others. Your leadership has preserved the project’s momentum and the team’s enthusiasm.
nthig beats a Geat Stat e beginning moments of a BI plan are where so much goes wrong or right. Use your imagination to navigate the plan before presenting or implementing it.
Project success means paying attention to—and imagining—all conceivable and inconceivable details ahead of
Perform cooperative detective work to discover every possible obstruction of importance, what other people know that you need to know, and how to enlist their
time, no matter how trivial they may seem. Expect the unexpected and prepare accordingly.
support before you begin a clumsy invasion. Nothing beats a great start.
Aticipatig a beach i Ptcl You can’t think of every ever y significant stumbling stone by yourself, of course. A good reporter has a contact list of anonymous sources to draw on. A good detective has developed a set of confidential informants. You must assemble the same support for your project. A nurse supervisor on the orthopedic floor at a hospital blew the whistle on a BI tool when she noticed that IT had given too much access to patient information. e radiology department read and misunderstood sensitive doctor’s notes about a patient, concluded that he would be nothing but trouble for the hospital, and then declined services to him. Not only were the notes supposed to be unavailable to the radiology department, but orthopedic personnel were the only ones who could properly interpret them. e BI tool that was supposed to be a business solution became a potential loss of revenue, to say nothing of a privacy violation. Imagine if that BI tool had been your responsibility. Imagine if you had developed contacts you could consult with, so that you were able to bounce bounce ideas off the nurse
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