Welcome to BI-AJ! Business Intelligence - Agile Initiatives

Welcome to my blog on software development with primary focus on data warehousing and business intelligence projects.

Often data warehouse and business intelligence initiatives use long delivery cycles with tangible results, whilst businesses rapidly change and adjust to the market. The consequence of long delivery cycles usually means that whenever a solution is in place the business has already changed and the effect of the BI initiative is reduced. Agile development methods are especially useful for rapid software development with requirements that are hard to define and within rapidly changing businesses, many times with a high success factor. However, agile development methodologies have not yet been acknowledged as delivery models for developing business intelligence systems. Many claim that small iterations are not suitable for data warehousing because of the demand for a strong and reliable infrastructure. The purpose of this blog is to present that the agile foundations for sure can be utilized with great success for developing and deploying business intelligence systems within small iterations.

Through-out a number of posts I will give my thoughts and ideas on how to develop software in the context of DW/BI using small iterations and a pragmatic perspective on development. I do have clear influences in agile development, however I try to stay pragmatic to rules and structures as all development initiatives are different. They are within different organisations with different cultures and with different goals with different employees and traditions. These are things that need to be considered when planning and deploying software efficiently.

I hope that I can start a debate on how agile principles can or cannot be used to deliver software within DW/BI projects, and I hope that I get feedback and response from you. I will continuously discuss and solve(?) any questions or scenarios that I received from you.

Stay tuned!