What's the best organizational structure to support BI

What have people found as the most effective organizational structure for BI?

I'm not a big fan of IT departments. Their focus seems to be on transactional systems and tend not to understand BI systems. I'm in a line of business and we've had the freedom to create a DW that is focused on the users. There is a ton of collaboration between creating reports and creating the database structure to support it. I guess this is where I think an IT department is weakest - when responding to a request for a report, when figuring out how to create the report, it helps to have a very good understanding of the reporting software and the database software. The wall between the 2 functions in IT seems too rigid.

I like the way IT can manage a project and they certainly bring a level of discipline that keeps things on the straight and narrow. But sometimes, strengths can also be a weakness. Sometimes procedures serve to keep processes from failing but at the price of excellence.

The IT department wants my database, my baby, my masterpiece. And I'm not so sure.

Resistance is futile. You're a victim of your own success. Ideally, if you are running a BI tool, you can still manage the metadata and reporting layers. The whole idea is self service. Leave the database and ETL to the IT team. Since you designed the database I'm sure you will be able to exert influence there as well. I always review my dimensional model(s) with the report developers on the business side of the house.

I could over see the design and keep doing the type of reporting that I want to do. Make IT do what they are good at.

Now, if someone can just teach them what a star schema is.

BoxesAndLines wrote:Resistance is futile. You're a victim of your own success. Ideally, if you are running a BI tool, you can still manage the metadata and reporting layers. The whole idea is self service. Leave the database and ETL to the IT team. Since you designed the database I'm sure you will be able to exert influence there as well. I always review my dimensional model(s) with the report developers on the business side of the house.

I am also an IT student and I totally agree with your statements and I think this the best what one can do, it really helps in the business. It would be an add on if we add a DW to these things.

i am visiting on first time to this forum and i join today, but i really like it and i find it very help full, hope that you will keep it up and we will make the forum beautiful

businessideas.pk/

I would like to know some thing more about this.

Just a quick update on this topic. I've managed to stay independent of IT. I am promoting the concept of a Business Intelligence Competency Center. My group is the de facto BICC but it needs to be made the official BICC. A BICC basically is in charge of the presentation area of the DW, designs and build cubes and reports, and all things BI. The logic behind the BICC is that it leverages BI instruments that have been successfully implemented to expand the capability across the company.

Hi Jeff,
may I ask how you are handling change control? We have several objects from the transactional system, the datawarehouse, relational frameworks, cubes and ultimately reports. All of which need to be change control. We're struggling to find a way to ensure we evaluate the impact of changes and attribute changes to business requirements. Well to be honest, we aren't doing it at all. We're a team of two , but spreading out in terms of report developers and we'd really like to get a handle on this now. Any recommendations gratefully received (and stories of what hasn't gone so well!)

Thanks

P