Data Warehouse & Business Intelligence

Data Warehouse & Business Intelligence

1. Introduction

Data Warehousing – the technology domain for Business Intelligence solutions is complex from an implementation standpoint because of the Develop – Support (Growth-Sustain) cycle followed concurrently. Every enterprise wide BI system continuously evolves over a period of time with new functionality getting added for every release.

But what makes BI unique & complex is that the user-centricity of the DW system cannot be compromised which is a more difficult endeavor than compared to other systems that are more technology-centric.

The solution to this vexing problem in development & maintenance of large data warehouses lies in the adaptation of Agile Frameworks. Agile development is a software development approach that "cycles" through the different phases, from gathering requirements to delivering functionality into a working release, having place-holders for thorough impact analysis & fool-proof regression testing techniques.

2. Subject Clarity

Data Warehousing / Business Intelligence outsourcing is at the cross-roads. There is immense potential for outsourced data warehousing solutions as it provides true value-addition for the company that is able to manage its enterprise wide DW implementations through a system integrator in an onsite-offshore model.

The Agile frameworks (Extreme Programming & MSF) have been in vogue for the past 2-3 years but its applicability to Data Warehousing is quite limited. Hexaware’s approach of delivering DW/BI solutions using this methodology in an outsourced scenario is quite unique and original and can be extended to cover complex analytical / data mining systems.

The Agile process for DW maintenance has been successfully implemented by Hexaware for customers. This process definition enables Agile methodology to be extended and applied across other DW maintenance projects as well.

Agile development is a software development approach that "cycles" through the development phases, from gathering requirements to delivering functionality into a working release.

The ultimate goal of any bottom-up development project should be to roll out new data mart functionality on a regular and rapid basis with a high degree of conformance to what was already there. By adopting specific practices from MSF and XP, we can facilitate the bottom-up, frequent release approach and, even more importantly, change our project team culture and associated behaviors to create better, more customer-focused applications than with the traditional waterfall approach.

Some of the salient points are:

Shared vision & small teams working on a specific functionality
Make frequent releases - Agile development strives to deliver small units of functionality that make good business sense
Relentlessly manage scope - Meeting a fixed release schedule will not happen unless the resource triangle is actively managed. The resource triangle is the three-way combination of requirements, time and resources. Any change to one leg of the triangle (misunderstood requirement, less time or fewer people) requires a corresponding change to at least one other leg
Create a multi-release framework - Agile development stresses that there must be a master plan and a supporting architecture. Use releases to add more customer functionality, not constantly rework what was done in the past

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