Do you wish you had more time to work on your Business Analytics strategy? Looking for faster cheaper analytics? As a Business Analytics Coach at Lodestar Solutions, my goal for 2016 is to coach you to deliver analytics by working smarter not longer. Whether you have IBM Cognos, Oracle, Microsoft, Tableau, QlickTech or others, Lodestar’s goal is to help you get twice as much done in half the time by leveraging an Agile or SCRUM approach to Business Intelligence, CPM, and Analytics.  Welcome to Agile Scrum for BI!

WHAT IS AN AGILE SCRUM FOR BUSINESS ANALYTICS?

Scrum is an iterative and incremental agile software development methodology for managing product development. An Agile Scrum recognizes that during the implementation, customers can change their minds about what they want and need. (That never happens in a BI implementation does it?) An Agile Scrum is a flexible, holistic development strategy where the implementation team works as a unit to reach a common goal, but the method of delivering the goal is not set in stone. Scrum enables the BI or CPM teams to self-organize by encouraging physical co-location or close online collaboration of all team members. The communication challenges common to projects are removed with a brief daily meeting among all team members called a Scrum, in which team member share what they did yesterday, what they are working on today, and challenges they see.

An Agile approach for Business Analytics accepts that the problem cannot be fully understood or defined. They evolve as more information is discovered. It focuses instead on maximizing the team's ability to deliver quickly, to respond to emerging requirements, and to adapt to evolving technologies and changes in market conditions.

An Agile Scrum process benefits the organization by helping it to:

• Increase the quality of the deliverables
• Cope better with change (and expect the changes)
• Provide better estimates while spending less time creating them
• Be more in control of the project schedule and state
• Increase job satisfaction of team members

If you want to learn more about Scrum, I strongly recommend Jeff Sutherlands books: “Art of Doing Twice as Much in Half the Time” and “The Power of Scrum“.

WHY DON’T THE CONSULTANTS USE AN AGILE SCRUM METHODOLOGY?

You are probably asking, “If Scrum is so great, why don’t our consultants use it in our implementation?” Moving to Scrum is a major shift in approach. Consulting firms are reluctant to switch because Scrum does not focus on hours. Instead, it’s focus is on the speed that you achieve the goals, known as the sprint velocity. Firms would need to massively overhaul their implementation approach, all their implementation tools and the skills of their team. But most of all, the Scrum approach fosters the client to become self-sufficient and, if you think about it, that’s just not good for consulting firms that have a large number of resources and want to keep the billings up. But, there are some firms that believe in using an Agile Scrum implementation methodology to business analytics.

At Lodestar Solutions, our certified Scrum Masters have developed our software agnostic agile implementation methodology specifically for Business Analytics deployments. These include Business Intelligence (BI), Corporate Performance Management (CPM), Budgeting, Dashboards, and Predictive Analytics which we call Lodestar’s BAAM – (Business Analytics Agile Methodology).   If you have questions on how an Agile Scrum approach to Business Analytics can deliver results faster and cheaper or would like to talk to a Lodestar Business Analytics Coach, contact us at Services@LodestarSolutions.com or call 813-254-2040.