Is it ever really finished?

In a Hollywood interpretation of the life of famous Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect, engineer and poet, Michelangelo, they depict several years where he worked on one of his most famous projects, the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

The Pope repeatedly, over the period of this time, asked him: "When is it going to be done?" and Michelangelo kept answering: "When it is finished." Eventually, after years of painstaking toil, the Sistine Chapel was completed, and to this day, its magnificent artwork can be enjoyed by humanity as a timeless masterpiece.

In business intelligence (BI), however, the industry is not that lucky. Firstly, users do not have several years in which to deliver a BI masterpiece, and in my experience, it is never truly finished. The good news nonetheless, is that BI can be enjoyed by satisfied users for many, many years, when implemented, managed and understood properly by the organisation.

The reason behind the fact as to why BI is never truly done is really rather simple. The underlying business, into which a BI system is implemented, is forever undergoing change. As such, a flexible architecture should be designed in which the organisation's BI solution should change in step with the changing business. This is the only way to rise to the challenge and ensure BI is truly effective on an ongoing basis.

Of course, there are milestones along the way to achieving this, especially as there are several tasks that do have definite endpoints. However, from an IT organisation point of view, the ongoing initiative of BI can be dealt with in manageable pieces. Hardware acquisition and installation can be managed and finished. Likewise, installation of newly acquired software needed can be planned and executed. User training can be scheduled. The underlying business processed can be dealt with in mini-projects that go through rapid implementation cycles, typically three to six months per business process or business area. The overall BI initiative will, however, never become static, unless it is not being used, or the underlying business has stagnated.

BI can be enjoyed by satisfied users for many, many years.

Cor Winckler is technical director of PBT.

Additionally, there are several other areas, besides the underlying business itself, that can also undergo change within the business and sometimes this change is rapid. Hardware becomes bigger, more powerful and cheaper all the time, and upgrading on a regular basis is part of change control in any IT project, and BI is no exception.

The underlying software also changes with new releases of Relational Database Management System (RDBMS), operating system, reporting, Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) and analytics tools. The rollout of these has to be managed together with the necessary people skills to use and best maintain all of the above. New methods of dealing with information and analysing data also become more popular every year. Getting to understand these, and sometimes making a conceptual paradigm shift in one's thinking, means new initiatives are not far away to bring these innovations to one's BI offering.

What is important to note, however, is that sometimes the BI initiative itself is the agent of change in the business. The information and insights that BI brings to management's attention might cause a new strategic direction, which could in turn impact the BI initiative with new demands for different information. This is just another illustration of the much-repeated assertion that BI must align with the business first and with IT second, and not the other way around.

So, on reflection, it becomes apparent that almost nothing in the world of BI remains constant, except the inevitability of change. Having a methodology, strategy and general work ethic that supports this kind of constant change is important, and allows one to embrace the situation with confidence - ensuring BI is always beneficial and offers an organisation that crucial benefit required to make the right decision and remain competitive, especially during these tougher economic times.