Sunday, January 8, 2012

Book review: Agile Analytics: A Value-Driven Approach to Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing: Delivering the Promise of Business Intelligence

A high percentage of classic waterfall model business intelligence projects are failing. One of the main reasons for this is that the waterfall model is a sequential model: Simply speaking, you plan first, then develop, then test etc and then the whole project is supposed to be finished. BI project normally span several months. During this time, requirements change, the priority of the requirements might change, the understanding of the client in regards to what BI actually is changes, etc. A classic waterfall model cannot  accomodate these changing requirements easily over time as planing was done in the first step only.
With "Agile Analytics: A Value-Driven Approach to Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing: Delivering the Promise of Business Intelligence" Ken Collier introduces agile methodology to BI projects.  Readers new to the agile methodology will find a detailed introduction (i.e. What are user stories? How do I conduct an agile project?), learn about the iterative cycles (sprints) which allow feedback driven development, various other approaches like test driven development, continuous integration and much more. Ken Collier also introduces the Message Driven Warehouse which among other benefits allows to easily and quickly implement new requirements.
In a nutshell, it is one of the best books on BI which I read last year, so I can only highly recommend it.

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