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BI Business Requirements David M Walker
ETIS Stockholm 14th-15th October 2010
How Valuable Are Your Requirements?
70 • Why? – Written but never
referred to (Shelf-ware)
– Out of date before they are built
– Cover the wrong things
– Can’t be tested
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%+ of all
documented requirements are worthless
And then there are the projects that just don’t document them!
What Makes Requirements Useful?
• Understandable & Accessible – Business requirements should be written in
such a way that anyone in the business can understand them
– Business requirements should be easily accessible by anyone in the business
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What Makes Requirements Useful?
• Revisions – It must be quick and easy to
update the requirements and possible to track the changes
– Developers must have a stable set of requirements whilst the business must be free to innovate and create new requirements
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What Makes Requirements Useful?
• Testable – It must be possible to test
both that the requirements are achievable within themselves and that the developed solution meets the requirements when it is delivered
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An essential piece of the puzzle Good requirements are part of your end-to-end methodology:
If you don’t know when and how you are going to use the requirements it is unlikely you will get any value from them
If you don’t meet the business’ expectation that is created by the gathering requirements process then it is unlikely that your project will be regarded as successful whatever you deliver
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Requirements & Testing • Ensure the requirements
are achievable within themselves
• Test that the developed solution meets the requirements when it is delivered
• Every methodology will be different • What follows is how we
do it …
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Creating achievable requirements
• Three step process: – Business Requirements – Data Requirements – Query Requirements
• Additional Collateral – Technical Requirements – Interface Requirements
• By-products – Business Definition Dictionary
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Step 1: Business Requirements • These detail the requirements from
a business point of view, using language which is meaningful to business users
• The business requirements must be clear and precise – Any business terms used must be
defined so that the business and the BI team have a shared, unambiguous, understanding of each requirement.
• A business value must be associated with each requirement
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Data Requirements
Query Requirements
Business Requirements
Step 2: Data Requirements • Detail the requirements for
business information from the data perspective
• Identify specific data structures and data items
• Still written from the business perspective, but map-able to actual database tables and columns
• Many data requirements for each business requirement and each data requirement may help satisfy may business requirement
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Data Requirements
Query Requirements
Business Requirements
Step 3: Query Requirements • These requirements provides
acceptance criteria so that the BI team can test that each requirement has been met
• They lists a number of potential queries that the solution should be able to provide answers to
• They illustrate how the business requirements can be satisfied from the data requirements
• Many query requirements use many data requirements to satisfy many business requirements
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Data Requirements
Query Requirements
Business Requirements
How the requirements fit together
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Business Requirement
Data Requirement
Data Requirement
Data Requirement
Data Requirement
Data Requirement
Business Requirement
Query Requirement
Query Requirement
Query Requirement
Query Requirement
Query Requirement
Query Requirement
is defined by the
data in the
are uIlised by the
which demonstrate that it is possible to saIsfy the
Creating Useful Requirements
• Business Requirements – Understood by the
business • Data Requirements – Informs the analysis
and design • Query Requirements – Provides the acceptance
criteria for delivery
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Does the process support the delivery?
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Requirements
Analysis
Design
Build
Acceptance Test
IntegraIon TesIng
System TesIng
Unit TesIng
Did we deliver what we promised?
Does the system hang together?
Have we build what was designed?
Does the code we’ve wriWen work?
What does it take to do this?
• European Fixed Line Operator – At start: 15 BRQ; 50 DRQ; 100 QRQ
• BRQ/DRQ took 3 weeks, QRQ took another 3 weeks – At 5 years: 19 BRQ; 72 DRQ; 225+ QRQ
• Effort incremental over time – Business Definition Dictionary (BDD) built as
part of the process • European Mobile Operator – At start: 18 BRQ; 100 DRQ
• BRQ took 3 weeks – At 1 year: 18 BRQ; 150+ DRQ
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How Do We Implement This?
• Project Services – Integrated Environment based on
free open source software Trac – Web Based solution with:
• Wiki / Ticketing / Version Control / Test Management / Security
– More Info: http://projects.datamgmt.com/
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Can we have your templates? • Templates are an ‘aide
memoir’ for methodology practitioners not a substitute
• People who just take the templates rarely follow the methodology and then blame the methodology for their failures
• Our consultancy services and white papers are more useful to you in developing your own successful BI methodology
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• No! But not for the reason you think
Things to watch out for …
• Success is Cultural • Which Methodology? • Mix & Match • Supplier Divorce • Where Metadata Starts
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Success Is Cultural
• Results are about: – Your company culture
• Are you adversarial? • Are you willing to
adapt? • Do you have a “can do”
attitude?
– The people you engage • The individuals • Not the supplier
company
– Then the methodologies templates and data models
– Then the technology
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Which Methodology?
• No evidence that any particular approach is “the best”
• Vendors & Systems Integrators market their successes but not their failures
• Anecdotally smaller and truly agile projects are also very successfully
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• The right one is the one that you can make function inside your organisation over many years
Mix and Match
• One provider is unlikely to successfully work with the deliverables from another provider
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– Different methodologies put information and steps in different places so trying to marry them up always has overlaps and gaps
– The price of vendor review and re-use is often larger than allowing the vendor to just do it their way and then internally ensure that everything is carried over from other projects, this also avoids the “blame game”
Supplier Divorce
• BI Projects are long-term – Typically 10-15 years
• DWH Development Contracts are shorter – Typically 2-5 years
• There will come a time when the developer leaves – It’s not always amicable – Plan for succession – Internalise critical parts of the methodology/
process and information
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This is where Metadata your starts
• Business & Data Requirements are the core of your Metadata
• Spine around which to build: – Business Definitions, Data Models,
ETL Loads, Universes
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• There isn’t a single tool to do this • You need several tools and an
integrated approach
In summary
• Useful Requirements: – Understandable &
Accessible – Revisions – Testable – An integrated part of
the development process
• Watch out for: – Success is Cultural – Which Methodology? – Mix & Match Solutions – Supplier Divorce – Where Metadata Starts
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BI Business Requirements Thank You
ETIS Stockholm 14th-15th October 2010