Providing value to the customer is one of the biggest challenges for any team to succeed in, let alone BI teams. Agile allows for moving into a faster delivery mode by slowing down to speed up. In this presentation, we cover tips for setting up an Agile practice, common pitfalls to avoid, and why Agile is just now taking off in the BI space.

1. Agile Business
Intelligence
Applying Best Practices in Software
Development
to BI, Analytics, and Data Driven Decisions

2. ● Agile Background
● Agile and BI
● Trends and applications
Overview

3. ● Started in 2001
● Origins in DARPA and Toyota
○ Waterfall Software Development
○ Lean Manufacturing
● Agile Manifesto written in 2001
Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Working software over comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan
What Is Agile?

4. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterfall_software_development
Waterfall Software Development

5. Waterfall's Failures
● Iterations - months to years
● Customer lock in
● Requirements rarely met
● There's just one little secret...

6. Waterfall's Failures
● Iterations - months to years
● Customer lock in
● Requirements rarely met
● There's just one little secret...
“Agile” was mentioned in the original paper
(back in 1970)!

7. Why Agile Wasn't Feasible Then
● Testing was expensive
○ Needed more hardware
○ Tooling?
● Automation was costly
○ Needed more hardware
○ Software would be custom
● Hardware and software were prohibitive
○ Mainframes cost $4.6 million
○ Little to no integration
Cost source: http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2007/08/ibm-mainframe-computer-in-1970-pictured.html

8. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agile_software_development

9. Why Agile?
● Customer satisfaction
● Business/IT Interaction
● Fail early, fail often
● Working software = progress
● Team ownership - self organized
● Faster adaptation
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agile_software_development

10. Who to Involve?
● BI team (5-6 people)
● Scrum Master - guide of the team
● Project Manager - guide of the business
● Business Stakeholder - Requestor of work

11. What Type of Agile?
Source: http://www.leadingagile.com/agile-training/

12. Where to Start?
● Project (Scrum)
○ Great for piloting agile
○ Team is consistent
○ Find what works in your team
● Support (Kanban)
○ Great for mature agile teams
○ Team is consistent, but roles will change
○ Less structure than Scrum

13. Implementation Pitfalls

14. Pitfall 1: The Balancing Act
“We need the time to
improve, streamline,
etc.” “Get it out the door
and with the
customer!”

15. Pitfall 1: The Balancing Act
“We need the time to
improve, streamline,
etc.” “Get it out the door
and with the
customer!”
Pay off debt, find ways
to prevent it.
Release as fast as
possible, without too
much compromise to
quality

16. Pitfall 2: Working with the same
tools
● Most BI Tools are not able to support:
○ Continuous Integration
○ Test Driven Development
○ True Version Control
○ Collaboration and fast iterations
● agile <> Agile

17. Pitfall 3: In Teams We Don’t Trust
● Business Team wants full control
● BI not treated as software development
● BI Team doesn’t involve Business Team

18. Implementation Tips

19. Where to Start?
● Find a Stakeholder (the bridge builder)
● Find a Scrummaster (the negotiator)
● Pick agile tools
● Pilot Agile in a small group

20. Where to Grow
● Test Driven Development
● Automation/Continuous Integration
● Agile Data Warehouse Modeling
○ Hyper-normalized
■ Anchor modeling
○ Hyper-generalized
■ Data Vault