Strategic Requirements for BI Application Development

From MIKE2.0 Methodology

Activity: Strategic Requirements for BI Application Development

Objective

Strategic Requirements for BI Application Development describe, from a user's and customer's perspective, what is expected from the system. What are its responsibilities? What services will it provide to its users? The goal of this activity is to get an understanding of the major functions of the BI application at a strategic level.

Major Deliverables

• Key Business Functionality of the BI Application
• Analytical methods
• Calculations methods
• Information Need/Organisation Unit/Location Matrix
• Access Methods

Tasks

Determine Key Functions Required of Business Application

Objective:

The purpose of this task is to refine the strategic business requirements into the capabilities required for BI application. This is done by identifying those processes driving the business and determining their relative impact towards the attainment of the goals. The method for this analysis will depend on the type of goals and drivers targeted. Special attention should be paid to analysis methods, calculations and visualisation requirements from the BI application.

Input:

• Strategic Business Vision
• Strategic Critical Success Factors
• Strategic Success Measures
• Initial High-Level Information Requirements
• Initial Conceptual Data Model
• Future-State Conceptual Architecture
• Future State Alternatives

Output: Strategic Functional Requirements for BI Application, including:

• Analytical methods
• Calculations methods
• Visualisation Requirements

Develop Business Function End-User Matrix

Objective:

This task surveys the user community to determine the information necessary for the business. It couples together the needs of the current operations together with the requirements of the vision provides the underlying framework to select an end-user tool-set that meets current as well as future business needs. It drills down from the high level requirements and the information gathered during the interviewing based assessment and begins to collect information that is often important when conducting the gap analysis process.

Input:

• Oranisational Model
• Findings on People, Organisation and its Capabilities
• Future-State Conceptual Architecture
• Strategic Functional Requirements for BI Application

Output:

• Strategic Capabilities Required of BI Application

Develop Organisation/Location/Association Matrix

Objective:

To develop an understanding of the information needs of each organisational unit for the different information categories. This is focused on end-users of information, and therefore relate to the information platform and the different locations where Business Intelligence users operate. This task is used to discover commonalities in use of information and may uncover infrastructure issues.

To executive this task, obtain an organisation chart for the enterprise. Produce a list of the organisation units that either create or use an information need within the scope of the project. Produce a list of the locations that will need to access the information from the system and then create a matrix associating those units and locations to the information needs identified previously.

Input:

• Organisational Model
• Findings on People, Organisation and its Capabilities
• Future-State Conceptual Architecture
• Strategic Functional Requirements for BI Application

Output:

• Information Needs/Organisation Unit/Location Matrix

Core Supporting Assets

Yellow Flags

• Strategic BI Requirements are not aligned with industry trends that require major shifts in approach, such as new control or compliance standards
• Strategic BI Requirements are driven solely by IT and lack business user representation
• Business users are unable to envision their requirements as lack at least some level of experience with similar technology concepts

Key Resource Requirements

• Technical Business Analyst
• Information Architect

Potential Changes to this Activity

Some aspects of Information Access may line up best with this activity as opposed to the more infrastructure-oriented capabilities. Some Content Management requirements may also align well into this activity if it is generalised. The best approach may be for this activity to be modified so its aligns it more generally with information access and application development.