The Purpose of This Book

Business Intelligence Roadmap is a guide for developing BI decision-support applications. The two main purposes of this book are to

1. Explain the complexity of BI decision-support projects

2. Present a step-by-step guide for the entire BI project lifecycle

Complexity

In order to give you an appreciation of the complexity of BI decision-support projects, we describe all of the components that go into a BI decision-support development effort. For example:

• You should know what makes a BI decision-support application different from a traditional decision-support system so that you can avoid costly mistakes.

• You should understand the infrastructure components of your new BI decision-support application, such as the tools available (for development and for access and analysis).

• You should be able to recognize items that could impair the success of your new BI decision-support application.

• You should determine how many resources you need and what type of resources, both technical and human.

• You should decide on the design or architecture of your BI decision-support application, such as designing for multidimensional reporting or ad hoc querying.

Step-by-Step Guide

Our step-by-step guide across the breadth of a complete development lifecycle includes activities, deliverables, roles and responsibilities, dos and don'ts, and entry and exit criteria, plus tips and rules of thumb to lead you to a successful BI decision-support implementation. For example:

• You should choose which steps you ought to perform on your BI project because no two BI decision-support projects are exactly alike.

• You should know whether to start with a cross-organizational decision-support solution or a tailored departmental solution with the basis for expansion.

• You should understand the sequence in which to perform development activities, that is, which ones can be performed in parallel tracks and which ones have a strong dependency on one another.

In contrast to topic-specific materials available on BI, this book is a single-source development guide written specifically for BI decision-support applications. The guidelines presented in this book are based not only on our personal experiences but also on some of the best practices covered in topic-specific books, articles, and Web sites.