THInKInG IT THrouGH

BI Best Practices:
Thoroughly Think
It Through
max T. russell
Avoid an ambush of your bI project by thinking through every
imaginableand unimaginabledetail.

max T. russell is the owner of Max and

Max Communications. He works behind
the scenes to promote individuals and
projects in a variety of industries.
maxt@maxtrussell.com

BI expert Alexis was hired by a nationwide adoption

agency to build a dashboard for user management. The
IT director told her during the interview that if this first
project went well, the CIO would approve a cautious BI
expansion throughout the organizationunder Alexis
leadership.
The IT director listened to Alexis BI philosophy,
approved her methodical approach to the dashboard
design, and then wished her well. Several days into the
job, Alexis hit a brick wall. The CIO, who knew just
enough about data architecture to make himself dangerous, stubbornly disagreed with her approach.
The project was destined to be a headache to the end
because Alexis had failed to anticipate one variablethat
someone might disagree with her architecture.
A successful BI plan depends on doing many things
right, but certain unanticipated details can cause painful
interruptions or even kill a project. Its worth your teams
time to develop a vivid imagination to discover surprises
that could ambush your plan.

navigate in Your mind

You dont want executives or users to see you floundering
because of a detail you didnt expect or know about.
Thats why you and your team must imagine your way
through every conceivable and inconceivable detail of
show-stopping significance.

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Consider this non-BI example of an environment in

which various details could make or break your efforts
the crawl space under my house. Its very difficult to
navigate. More than once I have crawled through the
fog of spiderwebs while squeezing past one tight, muddy
space after another. A building contractor said its the
worst crawl space hes ever worked in.
Thats why I do each repair in my mind before I go under
the house. I do not want to have to start over.

to do it the CIOs way rather than wear herself out in

repeated arguments with him. By then, she had lost
trust with the IT director, who felt he had no choice but
to deliver what the CIO would eventually demanda
dashboard that would never do what the adoption agency
needed. The blame would fall on the consultant, Alexis.
One question would have spared Alexis months of
anguish: Who else will be involved in deciding how
this project will be done? The result of not asking the
question was, in her words, a BI failure.

Fixing a leaking water pipe may require:

Pliers, a drill and drill bits, a hammer, a pry bar, a
flashlight and trouble light, screwdrivers, nails and
screws, a sled for carrying equipment, wire to support the pipe, wire cutters, a hat to keep spiderwebs
off my head, extension cords to allow me to crawl
as far as possible without getting lost, a face mask,
a cloth to clean my hands, a foam pad to lie on, a
plastic bottle to support my head while lying on my
back, gloves, and safety glasses to keep particles out
of my eyes.
If I fail to anticipate even one procedure or forget a tool,
I might have to make the miserable journey back to the
crawl space opening, pull myself out, find the right tool,
return to the opening, and crawl back to the trouble spot.
I dont always have the heart to go back.

Its worth your teams time to

develop a vivid imagination to

That question would have changed everything by giving

her a chance to schedule a meeting with the CIO (and
any other decision makers) to set realistic expectations. If
the CIO still insisted on a faulty dashboard, Alexis could
bow out of the job. She had no interest in doing things
the wrong way!
Furthermore, straight talk prior to being hired might
have been more persuasive, building the CIOs confidence
in Alexiss skill as a true expert who would not stand
silently by and let the agency waste money.

Anticipating the router

Sometimes details go unseen because they seem too tiny
to worry about. Ive found myself in uncomfortable situations when I incorrectly assumed that an electrical outlet
was within reach of the power cord on my presentation
equipment, or that a projection screen would be available.
These are easy mistakes to make. They are also easy to
avoid if you are willing to think through the details of
your plan.

ambush your plan.

Imagine that youre at a BI meeting when the entire

team agrees that the first step of the planning phase is to
connect three department leaders computers so they can
monitor and discuss the same set of planning data.

Anticipating Persons of Influence

You ask, Who is in charge of providing the router to

make that happen?

Now lets return to the problem Alexis faced with the

dashboard. Neither she nor the IT director had involved
the adoption agencys CIO in discussions about their
approach to the dashboards design. Alexis finally decided

It sounds like a petty question to your teammatesuntil

you explain why youre asking. A certain employee in the
central office moves as slowly as she possibly can when-

discover surprises that could

BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE Journal vol. 19, no. 1

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ever anything of importance depends on her approval.

Pulling a router out of the locked cabinet and assigning it
to the BI team is simple enough, but her modus operandi
is to control others by moving at a pace thats just slow
enough to frustrate them and remind them that they
need her.
Because you asked the right question and anticipated
a problem, a BI team member can notify the central
office manager that a router is needed ASAP, preventing
a miniscule variable from delaying your initiative for
a ridiculous 72 hours, as has happened to others. Your
leadership has preserved the projects momentum and the
teams enthusiasm.
Project success means paying attention toand imaginingall conceivable and inconceivable details ahead of
time, no matter how trivial they may seem. Expect the
unexpected and prepare accordingly.

Anticipating a breach in Protocol

You cant think of every significant stumbling stone by
yourself, of course. A good reporter has a contact list of
anonymous sources to draw on. A good detective has
developed a set of confidential informants. You must
assemble the same support for your project.
A nurse supervisor on the orthopedic floor at a hospital
blew the whistle on a BI tool when she noticed that IT
had given too much access to patient information. The
radiology department read and misunderstood sensitive
doctors notes about a patient, concluded that he would
be nothing but trouble for the hospital, and then declined
services to him.
Not only were the notes supposed to be unavailable to
the radiology department, but orthopedic personnel were
the only ones who could properly interpret them. The BI
tool that was supposed to be a business solution became
a potential loss of revenue, to say nothing of a privacy
violation.
Imagine if that BI tool had been your responsibility.
Imagine if you had developed contacts you could consult
with, so that you were able to bounce ideas off the nurse

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supervisor ahead of time. You would have been able to

present her with what-if scenarios and ask what impact
your project would have on the floors operation. You very
possibly could have avoided the breach in protocol. At the
very least, you would have built rapport with the supervisor and others whom you could add to your list of trusted
informantspeople who can help keep an eye on the
effectiveness of your business solutions.

nothing beats a Great Start

The beginning moments of a BI plan are where so much
goes wrong or right. Use your imagination to navigate the
plan before presenting or implementing it.
Perform cooperative detective work to discover every
possible obstruction of importance, what other people
know that you need to know, and how to enlist their
support before you begin a clumsy invasion. Nothing
beats a great start.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without
permission.