Chapter 17 - People, Process and Politics

Abstract

People, process, and politics are at the heart of the stickiest business intelligence (BI) project issues. As with any relationship, the interactions between IT and business are vulnerable to misinterpretations, poor communication, and disagreements that can bog down a BI project. The groups need to learn how to communicate and engage in give-and-take. It's important to identify the roles and responsibilities clearly, and understand that some roles span both business and IT. When they start building the team, IT and the business should work together to sponsor and govern design, development, deployment, and ongoing support. With sponsorship and governance in place, they can build the project management and project-development teams. BI training should involve both business and IT people, and the content and methods should be tailored to specific needs. Training is far more than just learning tools; without the concepts and fundamentals of BI and DW, the tools won't have context. Data governance is a people-centric program that is critical for transforming data into actionable information. BI projects would be easy without the challenges of sorting through people, process, and political issues. These challenges are often harder than the technology issues.