More Agile than ever

 

Just a few months ago we thought that “business agility” was just one more of those “things” that are becoming fashionable, however, as governments and companies try to reactivate their economy in the midst of this situation, we realize that the methodologies and techniques of agility in work teams, are of great value to implement strategies and recovery projects.

Agile Scheme

Let’s remember that Agile, is a methodology with an iterative approach to achieve fast deliveries, focused on collaboration and communication with the customer and stakeholders.

If you want to remember or know what are the 12 principles of agile, check the official manifesto at the following link. https://agilemanifesto.org/

From the BI point of view, we can assure that Agile must be inherent in the development of projects in companies with a changing and highly competitive environment, that is, any company at this time. Which leads to have a pace of constant value delivery, through minimum viable products (MVP).

From CepoBIA we have identified 4 essential aspects in any BI Agile project and we want to share them with you:

1. Alínie Business – IT:

It is the first and most important factor to be taken into account in any initiative, as this is the key to the transparency and fluidity of the project. Alignment with strategic objectives and the involvement of leaders and stakeholders from the initial stage, is key to achieve common understanding and reach quick and effective results.

2. Build confidence in the solution:

In the previous point we talked about the importance of involving functional leaders from the beginning, guaranteeing with this the transfer of business knowledge, and at the same time, identifying the breaches that may arise in the solution, in this way, when the first versions or demos start to be released, many of the possible failure scenarios will have been mitigated  many of the possible failure scenarios.

3. Choose an Agile methodology to govern the project:

There are different alternatives and you may want to combine the benefits of one or the other, the important thing is to get the project team to connect with these practices and end up becoming a culture. Yes, I know! Saying it is easier than putting it into practice, however, you have to try. Among the most used methodologies are:

Extreme Programming XP: focused on the interaction with the customer and considers continuous communication to develop requirements with a low degree of detail. SCRUM: Focused on an incremental development structure through Sprints that last between 2 and 4 weeks. Design Sprints: methodology used by google, oriented to the development of prototypes that are generated in no more than 5 days.

4. Choose a simple and powerful BI tool:

Finally, this point is key to achieve an active participation of the functional and interested parties and with this it is possible to better nurture the solutions. In the market there are many BI platform options, however, some require a degree of expertise for its use. However, Power BI and the Microsoft suite (Excel, Power Query, etc) have demonstrated power and simplicity for users of all types, something that throughout our experience with the development of implementations we have been able to verify.

Conclusion

The power of agile BI projects lies in articulating business knowledge with technology and structured practices or methodologies, which translates into fast and accurate deliveries.