Continuity in BI Solutions – the User Perspective Revisited

Ever so often in BI development one must go a fair distance from A to B and has to draw up a roadmap for doing so. That plan should be agreed upon between Business and IT – between users and developers. And there are several pitfalls in the process.
Here I will discuss the case of continuity as experienced from a user perspective. In some cases it is evident that continuity must be preserved when moving from the old BI solution, A, to the new BI solution, B: continuity of the collected data, historical and new, - and continuity of presentation in that calculated KPI’s remain intact with effectively identical business definitions.
In other cases disenchantment with the existing, old solution may be such that it may be tempting to opt for a “revolutionary” new solution without regard for real cross-solution continuity. From an IT perspective this may seem the more attractive and easier way to go, and Business may be persuaded to go along. Or so it may seem. According to my experience, things are rarely as simple as that.
The problems are that initially Business may not fully comprehend and understand the scope of a new BI solution, and that the Business representatives at the defining stage may not really be representative of all Business users.
As an IT person one should ask the right questions and those questions are not always just the simple and direct questions. In this case it is important to know what triggered the need to go from A to B. Are we looking at a native and immediate desire for a new BI solution, or are we really handling a spinoff project from a change of ERP system, a merger or acquisition, or a high level policy change in the company? In any of the latter cases, even if Business superficially agrees to a whole new BI solution one should be quite wary of possible complications. After all, the existing solution has been and still is supporting business needs in the short term. Any excitement about a new solution may quickly disappear when faced with the challenges of implementing it. How deeply rooted is dissatisfaction with the current solution? It may actually prove quite shallow!The solution then, I propose to be, that IT should really probe the level of user dissatisfaction with the current solution before settling for taking off with both legs to leap into the future and construct an entirely new BI solution to replace the existing one. And unless completely satisfied that the old solution will be missed be no-one, the prudent thing to do is to dissect the old solution and to document any changes, especially where features may be discontinued. It may seem tedious at times, but it actually has a number of advantages for IT too. Any such documentation and understanding is useful as part of the specification of the new solution. It also helps to clearly define and emphasize what is actually new features in the solution to be. And eventually, any difference in data presentation between the old and the new solution is just a potential error as long as it remains unexplained, - once understood and explained it becomes an improvement and an extra feature! - Last, but not least, a thorough understanding of the old solution is an immense help when constructing and implementing the new. Contrary to the leap into the future described above, it is like a long walk where one foot always remain in contact with the ground. And after all, when literally going somewhere, I – as most people – do tend to arrive faster and in better shape after a steady walk than after a series of leaps and jumps. Agree? - Stay tuned here at morlin’s BI blog for more deliberations on both technical and organisational aspects of BI!

Ancient Greece and modern DW, BI, and PM. - Is there a connection? (2/2)

The posting one month ago discussed the characteristics of DW, BI, and PM, and it mentioned a possible connection to the three top-level components of Aristotle’s modes of persuasion: Logos, Pathos, and Ethos. Time to follow up with the sequel to that!
Here are the main characteristics of each mode of persuasion, listed in direction of increasing impact:

• Logos - is logical appeal. Normally used to describe facts and figures that support the speaker's topic. Since data is difficult to manipulate, logos may sway cynical listeners. Having a logos appeal also enhances ethos (below) because information makes the speaker look knowledgeable and prepared to his or her audience. However, data can be confusing and thus confuse the audience. Logos can also be misleading or inaccurate,
• Pathos - is an appeal to the audience’s emotions. It can be in the form of metaphor, simile, a passionate delivery, or even a simple claim that a matter is unjust. Pathos can be particularly powerful if used well, but most speeches do not rely solely on pathos,
• Ethos - is an appeal to the authority or honesty of the speaker. He, or she, may be a notable figure in the field in question, have a special relation to it, be demonstrably and impressively knowledgeable, or be able to plead moral and ethical integrity and superiority.

Clearly, establishing an Enterprise DW is a basic appeal to business logic. But just as traditional logos is weak on persuasion, an EDW is by itself weak on execution on the revealed business logic, - the problem typically being that much logic is only implied, and emphasis and prioritization may be lacking between subject areas with different importance and urgency.
Similarly, a BI initiative is about directing attention towards a particular subject area and making the members of an organization collectively feel the importance and urgency of that relative to other issues.
Finally, formalized Performance Management is about determining and defining what is good and bad within an organization and a business, and about projecting these definitions onto actual events through KPI’s, scorecards and dashboards. Clearly, for that to work out presupposes a high degree of universal recognition and accept of those controlling a PM initiative, that is: PM by definition relies on ethos for persuasion.

If we accept the parallel between logos-pathos-ethos and DW-BI-PM, what does that tell us about modern business intelligence. To me the central issue is the question of balance. Ethos may be the strongest mode of persuasion, but too much ethos in a speech just produces pharisaism and self-righteousness. Pathos may also have a very strong impact, but excess pathos is the hallmark of political demagogues and business charlatans. Logos may formally be completely correct and superficially sufficient, but too strong a reliance on logos is self-defeating and may expose an inclination towards self-victimization and hindsight. A good speech should rely on all three modes of persuasion and keep a balance between them!

Today, a balance is also needed between DW, BI and PM - and modern businesses should accept that they need to develop a mixed presence of all three. A preference and a focus on just one approach is likely to be insufficient. An EDW ensures preparedness for unforeseen developments, which will certainly occur. But by itself an EDW may produce only that preparedness and very little action. BI initiatives may represent proactive actions vital to developing the business. But such initiatives need a solid foundation on data, or they may be just self-delusion. PM is essentially a reactive approach, which is necessary to control most businesses, but if applied pervasively and in too much detail, it will turn into a straightjacket that strangles innovation and forward-looking initiatives.
In conclusion then, proper management should seek to promote a balanced presence of both DW, BI and PM in the business – not to favor and choose one approach over the other two!

That’s all for now. July’s mid-month posting is likely to be just as deeply technical as this posting has been purely philosophical. Unless actual events intervene, that is, as they ever so often may do... Stay tuned here at morlin's BI blog!

Ancient Greece and modern DW, BI, and PM. - Is there a connection? (1/2)

On the surface it may seem far-fetched to see a link between ancient Greek philosophy and modern Data Warehousing, Business Intelligence, and Performance Management. But if you reckon from the title that I will try to make that connection, then you are absolutely right!

Let's consider some characteristic features of DW, BI, and PM in turn.

First there was Data Warehousing, and, ignoring that many early DW initiatives failed for technical reasons, it is also well known that simply building a technically sound and "successful" data warehouse is rarely enough to move an organisation. Even with all the right data available just a few mouse clicks away, if that is all there is to a DW, then business users are quite likely to stay away and ignore it.

Now enter Business Intelligence, which is a somewhat fluffy term that could mean anything from ABC to CRM to something completely novel and characteristic of a particular organisation. I suggest the common denominators for a BI application, activity - or just initiative - are

• a need for focus: "This is what we are going to do [as opposed to everything else], and this is the way to go about doing it [for us as a company and for you and me as individual employees],
• a need for communication and motivation: "This is all the wonderful things we - you and me - can achieve by doing so",
• a need for the necessary means: Without a solid foundation on data and an appealing application it may all be just hot air. It can even cause the derailing of an organisation which may have been slow but was at least moving in the right direction. The necessary data may be sourced from a data warehouse, or they may come from a dedicated "stovepipe" database and application.

Finally, enter Performance Management: Now we are talking values. What are our company values, what is good and bad and everything in between? And what are personal values of employees? What is the degree of alignment? Do we have attraction and positive synergy, or the opposite? Performance Management has explosive potential depending on whether it produces alignment or alienation. For precisely that reason it is essential to be very precise in formulating company values and implementing them in a Performance Management programme. If value formulation and PM implementation is skewed, the result will be a degree of alienation with the company's most valuable employees, and vice versa.

Now consider executive attitudes towards DW, BI, and PM. It appears to me that most sponsoring executives tend to have a personal favourite among the three and a feeling that "one is enough and will have to do the job of all three. We don't want to pay several times for the same service!" The technically oriented executive may have a preference for data warehousing and is to a large extent right; after all, a well designed and implemented data warehouse will support and facilitate BI and PM activities a long way. The very matter-of-factly business oriented executive may have a preference for PM, and is also, to a large extent, right; after all, doing PM right entails coming to grips with the underlying data supply problem, and we really only want to spend time on the data necessary for PM, not to waste our efforts by including some data in a data warehouse just because it is readily available and might be needed some other time! Finally, the mainstream middle-of-the-road executive may have a preference for a suite of separate BI projects, and he or she is also, to a large extent, right; after all, is it not preferable to formulate and fund activities with a well defined, limited, and manageable scope where the ROI may be estimated and controlled?

But where does that lead us? - I will try to answer that in a couple of weeks in the sequel to this first real blog entry!

In the meantime, I owe the interested reader a hint at where I am going. Try reading about Aristotle's three modes of persuasion within the art of rhetoric and argumentation: logos, pathos, and ethos, e.g. at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modes_of_persuasion. Is there a primary connection, or affinity between Data Warehousing and logos, between Business Intelligence and pathos, and between Performance Management and ethos? I think there are such affinities, and I will return shortly to elaborate on that idea and its possible consequences. Stay tuned here at morlin's BI blog!