You’ve watched the Apprentice with Donald Trump and Lord Alan Sugar. You know that the Project Manager is usually the one gets fired. You’ve heard that Business Intelligence projects are prone to failure. You know that a quick Bing search for ‘why do Business Intelligence projects fail?’ produces a search result of 25 million hits! Despite all this… you’re now Business Intelligence Project Manager – now what do you do? In this session, Jen will provide a ‘sparks from the anvil’ series of steps and working practices in Business Intelligence Project Management. What about waterfall vs agile? What is a Gantt chart anyway? Jen will give you some ideas and insights that will help you set your BI project right: assess priorities, avoid conflict, empower the BI team and deliver the Business Intelligence project successfully!

1. The Accidental Business
Intelligence Project Manager
Jen Stirrup
SQL Server MVP
Director-At-Large (Elect) for PASS Board

2. SQLSaturday Events – Oct/Nov/Dec
Upcoming International Events
Upcoming North America Events
•
•
•
•
•
Nov 2 #256
Nov 2 #255
Nov 9 #248
Nov 16 #265
Dec 7 #233
Kalamazoo
Dallas
Tampa BI Edition
Oregon
Washington DC
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Nov 9
Nov 9
Nov 30
Dec 7
Dec 7
Dec 13
Dec 21
#257
#263
#261
#259
#266
#264
#274
Visit www.sqlsaturday.com to register
for an event near you!
Verona
Manila
Moscow
Kharkov
Lima
Ancona
Slovenia

3. Virtual Chapter Meetings – Oct/Nov
VIRTUAL CHAPTER
MEETING
TOPIC
Application Development
Nov 1 – 7:00pm (GMT – 07:00)
DIY:T-SQL Swiss Knife Using ScriptDOM TSQL parser – presented by Arvind
Shyamsundar
Big Data
Nov 5 – 2:00pm (UTC-05:00)
Table Partitioning: Secret Weapon for Big
Data Pro – presented by
Book Readers
Nov 20 – 12:00pm (UTC – 08:00)
Delivering Business Intelligence 5th Meeting
– by Brian Larson
Global Russian
Nov 20 – 3:00pm (UTC +3:00)
Конкуренция за ресурсы в
многоядерных системах. Поиск и
устранение причин конкуренции –
presented by Евгений Хабаров (Eugene
Khabarov
Business Intelligence
Nov 20 – 12:00pm (UTC – 08:00)
Delivering Business Intelligence 5th Meeting
– by Brian Larson
Virtualisation
Nov 13 - 17:00 GMT
Testing and Benchmarking SQL Server
Consolidation – Frank Cicalese
Data Architecture
Nov 14 - 18:00 GMT
Challenges to designing financial
warehouses – Data Arch team

4. PASS Virtual Chapters Listing
Check out the sqlpass.org for more information on all the Virtual Chapters
including:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
4
Application Development
Azure
Big Data
Book Readers
Business Analytics
Business Intelligence
Data Architecture
DBA
DBA Fundamentals
Healthcare
Master DataData Quality
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Performance
Oracle
Powershell
Professional Development
Security
Virtualization
Women in Technology
Virtual PASS Portuguese
Global Chinese
Global Spanish
Global Russian

5. Volunteer Recognition Programs
Outstanding Volunteer Program
•
PASS invites you to nominate your favorite volunteers for "Outstanding Volunteers
of the Month.“
•
Submissions can be sent anytime to VolunteerRecognition@sqlpass.org
Please provide:
• nominated volunteer's contact details,
• a brief list of the PASS programs the member has participated in
• the number of years in the community
• a short description of why you think they should be recognized
•
Chosen nominees will be announced in the PASS Connector newsletter and receive
a Certificate of Appreciation

6. JOIN US for our second annual event to get the best learning for
analyzing, managing, and sharing business information and
insights through the Microsoft Data Platform of technologies.

7. Stay Involved!
•
Sign up for a free membership today at sqlpass.org
•
•
•
•
Linked In: Professional Association for SQL Server
Facebook: Professional Association for SQL Server Group
Twitter: @SQLPASS
The PASS Blog: sqlpass.org

8. The Accidental Business Intelligence
Project Manager (Jen Stirrup)
8

9. Fail to plan… plan to fail?
Plans are only good intentions unless they
immediately degenerate into hard work.
(Peter Drucker)
9

10. If computers get too powerful you can
organise them into a committee - that will
do them in.
Bradleys Bromide
1
0

11. Waterfall Projects
Assess
1
1
Prove
Iterate
Rollout
Evolve

12. Urgent versus Important
What is important is seldom urgent,
and what is urgent is
seldom important.
Urgent means that a task requires immediate attention.
Important means tasks are things that contribute to our long-term
mission, values, and goals.
URGENT does not mean IMPORTANT
1
2

13. 1
3

14. We are in Present Shock….
1
4

15. Why is why Agile might be popular..
1
5

16. Manifesto for Agile Software Development
We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and
helping others do it. Through this work we have come to value:
Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Working software over comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan
That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items
on the left more.
This Manifesto can also be seen as an Agile PM Manifesto.
1
6

17. What does this mean for you?
Agile projects can be hard!
Balance to be achieved between
• Control and planning
• Freedom to deliver
1
7

18. So what do you do?
Review deliverables
Track outstanding tasks
Track budget separately
Re-assess Risks regularly
Resolve Issues
Protect the delivery team from distractions.
1
8

19. A common goal
I would say that what we've gotten for a half billion dollars is an
unpronounceable acronym [DIMHRS] (US Defence Secretary Robert
Gates)
Operations keeps the lights on, strategy provides a light at the end
of the tunnel, but project management is the train engine that
moves the organization forward. (Joy Gumz)
1
9

20. Change is the only Constant
2
0

21. Key Project Items
Terms of Engagement – what will we do?
Business Goal – what is the reason the project exists?
Vision – focuses on the ‘end game’
Who is the end user? – make sure they are represented. Legacy system?
Requirements
Keep high level
Measure often!
Convert to a statement of requirements
2
1

22. User Stories
2
2

23. Devil’s Triangle
Customer
Project
Equilibrium
Software
vendor
2
3
Delivery
Team

24. Devil’s Triangle
Customer
Project
Equilibrium
Software
vendor
2
4
Delivery
Team

25. Devil’s Triangle
Customer
Software
Vendor
2
5
Delivery
Team

26. Devil’s Triangle
Customer
Delivery
Team
Software
Vendor
2
6

27. Devil’s Triangle
Customer
Software
Vendor
Delivery
Team
2
7

28. Devil’s Triangle
Customer
Project
Equilibrium
Software
vendor
2
8
Delivery
Team

29. Gantt Chart
2
9

30. Look after your people
In NASA, we never punish error. We only punish the concealment of
error. (Al Siepert)
The best Project Managers are the ones who:
Will protect team members.
Do not expect people to work 70 hours a week. A bad reputation
spreads!
Will turn a ‘no’ into a not yet, and manage properly
3
0