In this post, I assume that people who are gathering business intelligence requirements are business domain experts and knowledgeable dimensional modelers (logical and not physical techie modelers).
The challenges in gathering business intelligence requirements are:
Business folks are too busy for BI: In a transactional system, business owner has a fairly good idea on what functionality, control or feature they are looking for. This is because it is linked to their day-to-day operations and survival. Life still can go on without BI for another day.
Business does not know what it wants- there are too many choices: In OLTP, one has mostly linear and limited options, one can choose from. In case of BI, you can have hundred of different information requirements.
Crises Driven: As its difficult for business to pin-down what it wants from information perspective, the information requirements skew towards immediate need.
One way to manage this challenge is to do an intensive home-work, before you meet the business owner. You home work should include going through:
- Strategy blue-print including SWOT, competition land-scape etc..
- Enterprise Business plan
- Functional Business Plan
- Minutes of the management meetings
- Goal-sheets of the key stakeholders
- Current MIS and Reporting Packs
This will give you a good idea on the business priorities and issues. In other words, you will need to carry with you, the business landscape at functional ( for which you are building a Data Mart) and at an enterprise level. It does not mean that you would be leading the interviewee. This will enable you a better questioning and conscious-keeping for comprehensiveness. The biggest advantage is to be able to related to the interviewee. If interviewee feels that you know his world, he will open up much more.
NOTE- the above home-work may not only be done by the interviwer but also for the interviewee. While the business user is aware of his world and priorities, going through the above-said documents will re-inforce and systematize his thinking.
For more details around the business requirements, you can refer Data Warehouse Business Requirements Gathering in my portal Business Intelligence and Performance Management Institute.
