Open Source Analytics

We’ve long held that Analytics and BI cannot (and should not) be viewed as yet another technology/tool for the traditional business. It IS NOT yet another IT project.

The true value of BI is in viewing (and nurturing) it as the cognitive base and a response model for an organization in dialog with the ‘external reality’. In that sense BI is a truly disruptive phenomenon, even though it is the logical next step for the all-round ‘digitization’ that has been taking place for the last few years.

Yet, most managers appear to be struggling to fit Analytics into their traditional repertoire instead of looking at it afresh and leveraging it like any disruptive technology should.

An interesting HBS Working Knowledge article about Disruptive Innovation that may give you some ideas: Six Keys to Building New Markets by Unleashing Disruptive Innovation : HBS Working Knowledge

Here’s an interesting article that applies Systems Theory concepts to BI and views it in the context of the organizational environment it operates in. If organizations are viewed as cognitive systems in dialog with their environment, then BI is a ‘technical artifact that encodes a description of the business environment (i.e., the data model).’ (more…)

Building a successful Data Warehouse as part of a BI roll out is going to test both your tolerance for ambiguity and the resilience of your development methodology. Traditional water-fall model tends to fail as BI requirements change frequently. So if the traditional big-bang waterfall is not likely to work, what does?

Agile development is an approach that “cycles” through the development phases, from gathering requirements to delivering functionality into a working release. (more…)