Business Requirements is the most important and rather challenging aspect of a Data Warehouse project. Majority of failures of Data Warehouse initiatives are due to lack of business understanding and/OR engagement during project and post implementation phase. This lack is primarily due to Data Warehouse initiative being thought as an IT project, instead of it being a business project with IT as one of the enablers. The business requirement gathering includes following steps:
Understand 'As Is' situation on the identified Data warehouse themes.
Now that for each Data Warehouse business theme, you have 'Business Themes One pager ', you can now progress on having a greater understanding of the same. This means that you now get back to the same set of material during the listing of 'Data Warehouse themes' and go to the next level detail. Before you go for an interaction with the business user, you should ideally have done maximum homework.
One reality, which we have constantly seen is that getting business attention and time for Data Warehouse projects is much more difficult than that in the typical operational initiative. Therefore one should fully grasp the business dynamics, issues, facts and figures from alternate sources as much as possible before one gets onto an interview. This will enable you to:
- List out intelligent questions, so not to miss anything.
- Able to relate better with the business users and talk in their language.
Identify and inform the Data Warehouse stakeholders for DW Business themes
Once you have done fair degree of homework, you will have some semblance of the themes in terms of metrics, objectives, issues and challenges etc. and you will also know on whom all are linked to the given business theme. Every theme will be having an owner and set of Data Warehouse stakeholders. Out of this set, you have to identify the ones, which have an impact on the business requirements.
For example, for a theme of 'Enhancing Product Portfolio to Maximize Profitability while achieving Target Sales' will have the biggest stakeholders in terms of head of distribution, product manager, Chief Financial Officer and Risk Manager. Head of operations will also be having a stake holding, as a change in the product mix could impact his delivery SLA’s. However, he may not be be among the top list of stakeholders for business requirements gathering.
PLEASE REFER Execution-MiHPractice Tool Data Warehouse Business Requirements Pre_Interview Letter
Conduct Data Warehouse requirements sessions
This phase is extremely important, as you have to absorb the maximum insights from the business stakeholder in the limited period of time. The challenges are:
- The Business owner has documented business process and goals, but typically does not have the documentation of his analysis requirements.
- A business owner is too busy to think about what information he needs.
- Typically the business OR analysis needs are driven by the current set of fires a business stakeholder is engaged with. This leads to short-term focused business requirements, which have high propensity to change.
- While a typical analysis cubes would work around 20-25 dimensions, a business user thinks of his analysis needs in the range of 6-7 dimensions at a point of time.
- If asked for validation, rarely a user will say that he 'does not need' a specific analysis.
Therefore, it is must that one goes with a list of questions along with a draft set of possible business requirements. This homework, should be used for validation and ensuring completeness, and not for 'putting words in the mouth' of the business stakeholder.
The Data warehouse business requirement sessions will include:
- A mail to the business owner on the business requirement session. The mail should contain the objectives, outcomes, processes, pre-work and material that must be arranged before the session. A list of business requirements questionnaire should be sent to the respondent early on.
- Ensure that the business owner does not delegate the business requirements session to one of his deputies.
- At least two roles are needed. One is the interviewer and other the scribe. This ensures that nothing gets missed out.
The business requirements are no longer limited to 'what ' and 'When' of analysis requirements, but also includes 'why'. 'Why' includes on what management action the business owner will take, if he gets the analysis.
PLEASE REFER Execution-MiHPractice Tool Business Requirement Interview template |
