Agile business intelligence is a method of implementing business intelligence (BI) tools and initiatives using the agile methodology commonly adopted in software development.
Agile Business Intelligence
Agile Business Intelligence is nothing but the utilization of agile software methodology specifically for Business Intelligence projects. Software developers prefer this method as it reduces go-to-market time and helps them to cater to the dynamically changing user demands.
It is a recurrent process, where the product undergoes continuous evolution with constant iterations in the user interface, visualizations, reports, dashboards, and new BI features and functionalities that are added over a period, depending on market demands. Agile business intelligence is quite regularly used in embedded business intelligence projects, which requires additional layers of embedded software integration, mainly to meet the requirements of end-users.
A very fundamental requirement of agile methodology and business intelligence is the team’s detailed knowledge of the business intelligence capabilities of their product. If deployed correctly, agile business intelligence platforms can help in users’ adoption for a longer duration of time.
Importance of Agile Business Intelligence
As it is quite evident that Business Intelligence combined with agile development methodology is proven to be a successful approach, vis-à-vis the traditional approach. Agile Business Intelligence helps in selecting the right set of BI software for specific projects. Most of the modern BI tools are built on the agile methodology making them far more superior compared to tools coming out of the traditional approach.
Benefits of Agile BI
While deploying a business intelligence project, agile methodology is very pertinent. This is primarily because agile methodology covers a multitude of business processes, that encompass constant changes and can implement these feedbacks and changes through a continuous process.
Having agile methodology allows developers to deploy small chunks of software projects iteratively. A major benefit of going this way is that it brings about tremendous flexibility in delivery, easier user adoption, and faster return on investment.
In most agile business intelligence projects, the stakeholder team does have clear visibility on the objective of this initiative. These objectives are usually not documented at the beginning, hence, a waterfall or iterative approach, followed in agile methodology, helps in breaking the entire project into components such as dashboards and reports.
What challenges does Agile BI solve?
One of the primary challenges that agile business intelligence methodology solves is the time-to-market, particularly where the ROI achievement timeline is longer, and the initial investment is very high. However, due to constant change in the requirements of OEM customers and the development of SaaS-based solutions, has created a burgeoning rise in the pressure to implement a new Bi platform either internally or within their existing product.
We can see that even today some organizations prefer to go for a perpetual pricing model due to an anticipated long-term gain, while some prefer a subscription-based model that spans the cost over few years. Does that mean that agile business intelligence does not have a say in today’s Bi initiatives? No, whenever there is an assessment on optimizing total operational cost (which is crucial for an organization), Agile Business Intelligence methodology becomes even more significant as it reduces the overall total cost of the project.
This helps in bringing about constant improvement thereby resulting in faster market penetration and growth in the overall business.
Tips for Agile Business Intelligence
To ensure a successful implementation of the agile business intelligence platform, here are some additional tips that will help you in achieving the same.
- Ensure that the stakeholders are constantly updated about every step in this initiative. It is also important to have these stakeholders actively participate in this process and be continuously engaged with it.
- Document all the key action items only wherever necessary. A key difference between traditional methodology and agile is that agile is more about daily scrum meetings for enhanced team communication. Hence, it does not require too much documentation – but only wherever pertinent.
- If you select a BI software that requires a traditional approach, then all your efforts of having an agile business intelligence platform will go futile. Hence, it is important to select the right BI software.
Final Thoughts
The reporting requirement of enterprises is constantly changing. The only way to address this dynamically change is to have a flexible business intelligence system, that can generate reports as and when required.
A meticulously planned agile implementation of a business intelligence system will ensure that the system caters to the requirement. Having an agile methodology helps the project team to fulfill new requirements from the user group and deliver them quickly.
Organizations can reap the benefits of having an agile business intelligence system to help them make well-informed decisions
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