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Agile BI: Realigning IT with business

15th June 2011 | Category: BI

Business Intelligence (BI) is generally centralised at the expense of agility. This creates problems: BI is sluggish and decentralised structures are allowed to grow again. Agile BI methods applied in the framework of BI strategy and governance can help in getting a grip on the situation.

In most industries, business agility is a strategy for success or a recipe for survival. Organisational structures are made more flexible, fixed costs are transformed into variable costs, product cycles are accelerated and processes harmonised. All with the goal of being able to dynamically adjust to market developments and to reduce risks.

At the same time we have also seen the professionalisation of BI, which has been accelerated by the crisis of recent years. This development was mostly undifferentiated as BI centralisation and BI efficiency programmes, and promoted the use of classical IT management concepts for organisation and processes. In other words: We have seen a pendular movement taking BI from strong decentralisation and few professional structures to the opposite extreme of “one size fits all” – resulting in a classic reflex response by organisations. And we can see the result today – agility, that allow us to keep up with business changes and demands, has suffered significantly.

This trend is so much more than an unpleasant side-effect: BI is sluggish, in which – in a best case scenario – only uncontrolled decentralised structures can grow (BI technologies other than IT control, new IT organisations on the business side). In a worst case scenario it could lead to the progressive failure of BI in its primary function as business enabler. This example illustrates such a failure: Where before a new request could be realised without risks in the shortest amount of time when implementing centralisation and efficiency programmes, this is now associated with significantly longer lead time and higher IT- as well as business costs for the enterprise as a whole due to inappropriate governance rules and an inflexible delivery organisation.

Some consequences are inevitable: The loss of control over strategic BI and IT design, higher IT- and processing costs (as the sum of central and decentralised costs), damages to how BI and IT in general are perceived.

The lesson is thus: “One size does not fit all”. Only those who know the specific success factors of BI, and who possess the necessary experience to clarify strategic and governance-related topics to the stakeholders in IT, business and sourcing will be able to present BI differently – in a way that takes into account both efficiency as well as agility.

Using agile BI methods in the conception and implementation of BI strategies and BI governance will enable us to get a grip on the situation. Our Brightcon consultants can explain how this works and what levers are the main factors operating inside this kind of BI strategy and governance.

Stefan Busch, Management Consultant