Foreword

In today's highly competitive and increasingly uncertain world, the quality and timeliness of an organization's "business intelligence" (BI) can mean not only the difference between profit and loss but even the difference between survival and bankruptcy.

In helping senior executives and information technology (IT) managers, Moss and Atre's greatest contribution, I believe, is the comprehensive nature of their "roadmap"; as the subtitle of their book promises, they have provided a complete project lifecycle for the development of such systems. Because BI and decision-support systems ultimately rely on a rich treasure trove of data, there is a significant emphasis in Business Intelligence Roadmap on various technical aspects of data: meta data, data mining, data warehousing, multidimensional data analysis (online analytical processing [OLAP]), data security, and so on. But there is also significant emphasis on the business justification, project planning, analysis, implementation, and deployment details of BI systems. In addition to the more traditional details of systems analysis, Moss and Atre also provide practical advice on the structure and organization of the project team, as well as the skills and talents of the human resource roles required for such project teams . And, because of the importance of building enterprise-wide BI systems, the authors also describe the lifecycle activities that must be carried out in a cross-organizational fashion.

Anyone planning to lead a BI project initiative, as well as the data analysts, systems architects , and other senior IT professionals involved in such an initiative, should definitely read Business Intelligence Roadmap from cover to cover. It wouldn't hurt senior executives to read the entire book, too, for then they might have a better appreciation for the careful planning and disciplined project organization required to make a BI project succeed. But Moss and Atre have wisely recognized that many senior executives are too busy, or too technophobic, to read the entire book; for such people, they have provided an "at a glance" section of the book that concludes with a final chapter summarizing dos, don'ts, and tips for each of the project lifecycle steps that they discuss in detail. For example, the penultimate tip, in the final chapter of the book, advises the reader to

Implement your BI applications using the release concept. It is much better to deliver high-quality , partially functioning application releases over time than to deliver a low-quality, completed application that is fraught with many defects and with dirty data. If the first release is successful, new requirements will emerge as the business people get used to the iterative development process.

Edward  Yourdon
New  York  City
September  2002