Rarely does a consulting firm gather its expertise on a subject, especially knowledge as valuable as rapid data warehousing, and place it in a book. This volume distills more than ten years of research conducted at Ceregenics, Inc., on creating development teams that can quickly and effectively develop business intelligence applications. Given that building and deploying data warehouses can cost millions, Agile Data Warehousing not only offers practitioners financial savings but also shortens delivery times and improves application quality. The Agile movement has yielded exciting innovations for "maximizing the work not done" in software engineering. Generally, however, the movement offers only high-level approaches geared more for data capture systems than for data management applications.With Agile Data Warehousing, Ceregenics adapts generic Scrum and XP for data warehousing, grooms them into a single, bona fide development method, and demonstrates that the results can pass formal methodological evaluations such as those found in SEI's Capability Maturity Model.Featured is a six-stage plan for launching Agile warehouse projects that guides data applications professionals step-by-step in becoming a world-class development team. It also describes how to avoid resistance and repair turmoil that introducing a radical method can cause, even for a Fortune 500 company with a skeptical information systems department grounded in traditional project management techniques.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
About the Author
Ralph Hughes, MA, chief systems architect for Ceregenics, Certified Scrum Master (CSM), and PMI project management professional (PMP), has built data warehouses since 1982. Fluent in French, he works internationally, leading Agile projects for Fortune 500 companies in aerospace, telecommunications, and pharmaceuticals. He lives in Denver, Colorado, and skis and fly fishes between projects.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book brings together a lot of ideas about agile DW that have only been touched on in other books and journals. It is an excellent 'how to' book for anyone interested in introducing agility to the decidedly 'waterfall' world of mainstream BI practices and methods. The book goes beyond being an agile polemic by providing deep thinking and research supporting the practice of agile BI.
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful
By Jason Yip
Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase
I picked this up based on a recommendation from a work colleague and I don't understand why he recommended it. I found this difficult to read due to poor choice of vocabulary and lack of logical message structure. I found too many sections to be about introductory Agile concepts rather than specialised Data Warehouse / BI issues so I ended up spending a lot of time skimming.
Formatting for the Kindle was very poor and many figures are not understandable.
There are also a number of cutesy acronyms based on Ceregenic's specific approach that I just found distracting.
I have a very strong suspicion that the interesting parts of this book could be better communicated as tightly copy-edited articles or blog posts. Nothing really came out to me as particularly insightful but given that I drifted into skimming, I may possibly have missed something buried in the noise.
Formatting for the Kindle was very poor and many figures are not understandable.
There are also a number of cutesy acronyms based on Ceregenic's specific approach that I just found distracting.
I have a very strong suspicion that the interesting parts of this book could be better communicated as tightly copy-edited articles or blog posts. Nothing really came out to me as particularly insightful but given that I drifted into skimming, I may possibly have missed something buried in the noise.
By Fetsie Dobbs
Format:Paperback
I had high hopes that this book would clearly explain how to implement a BI solution using scrum. I expected it to contain some tangible examples both of Scrum and BI increments built using Scrum. There are many simple and tangible explanations of Scrum available on the web that do not take 300 pages. I did not find this book useful.
First, I found the organization of the book hard to follow. Second, I found the explanations to be simply a verbose run-of-the-mill explanation of Scrum. In fact, I found them confusing at times. Frankly, I get tired of reading Scrum stuff in which there is a continuous exaltation of Scrum and a repetitious denigration of anything that is not Scrum. Not everything in the world that isn't Scrum is BDUF (big design up front); nor do other ways always take forever. Third, there was little tangible description either BI or data warehousing in the book. However, my biggest objection is that there are almost no examples. The one data model example (of an ORDERS data model on page 129) has several problems: 1. it is a generic model. Would someone be actually implementing this data model in a BI environment using Scrum or anything else for that matter? Why would you even need Scrum to come up with this model? On close examination, is the model meaningful and correct? Is the relationship between Order, Party, Party Role and Party Role Type necessary? Is is even correct? If an order can have only one party, how many roles can they possibly be playing? Since an Order has only one Party, but a Party can have many Party Relationships, which Party Relationships are relevant to the Order? This example is near useless. Also, the book does not refer to integrated sandboxing, which would be essential for rapid turnaround of Scrum increments. After years of data warehousing I have found that there are a few simple but essential principles to achieving success at it, 1. break the work into increments; 2. make the increments short (1-3 months); 3. timebox the work; 4. deliver a prototype early (thus the need for sandboxing); and 5. gather a small, cross-functional team.
The author advocates presenting a tiered model. Well, some modelers occasionally do that but most professional modelers do not. A model should be presented in whatever way will be most useful and understandable to the audience. It is still not a typical informational model and I don't see what the data model, tiered or not, adds to the discussion of BI with Scrum.
If you are looking for a tangible way to do BI with Scrum, I would not recommend this book. If you are looking for a good description of Scrum, you can easily Google it and get a good understanding of it in no time.
First, I found the organization of the book hard to follow. Second, I found the explanations to be simply a verbose run-of-the-mill explanation of Scrum. In fact, I found them confusing at times. Frankly, I get tired of reading Scrum stuff in which there is a continuous exaltation of Scrum and a repetitious denigration of anything that is not Scrum. Not everything in the world that isn't Scrum is BDUF (big design up front); nor do other ways always take forever. Third, there was little tangible description either BI or data warehousing in the book. However, my biggest objection is that there are almost no examples. The one data model example (of an ORDERS data model on page 129) has several problems: 1. it is a generic model. Would someone be actually implementing this data model in a BI environment using Scrum or anything else for that matter? Why would you even need Scrum to come up with this model? On close examination, is the model meaningful and correct? Is the relationship between Order, Party, Party Role and Party Role Type necessary? Is is even correct? If an order can have only one party, how many roles can they possibly be playing? Since an Order has only one Party, but a Party can have many Party Relationships, which Party Relationships are relevant to the Order? This example is near useless. Also, the book does not refer to integrated sandboxing, which would be essential for rapid turnaround of Scrum increments. After years of data warehousing I have found that there are a few simple but essential principles to achieving success at it, 1. break the work into increments; 2. make the increments short (1-3 months); 3. timebox the work; 4. deliver a prototype early (thus the need for sandboxing); and 5. gather a small, cross-functional team.
The author advocates presenting a tiered model. Well, some modelers occasionally do that but most professional modelers do not. A model should be presented in whatever way will be most useful and understandable to the audience. It is still not a typical informational model and I don't see what the data model, tiered or not, adds to the discussion of BI with Scrum.
If you are looking for a tangible way to do BI with Scrum, I would not recommend this book. If you are looking for a good description of Scrum, you can easily Google it and get a good understanding of it in no time.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
1.0 out of 5 stars
Limited coverage
I found this book lacking in content. Too many pages addressing the issues of traditional methodologies and a limited adaptation of generic agile practices to business intelligence... Read more
Published 11 months ago by Daniel Galassi
5.0 out of 5 stars
Agile is a given. How do you get it done is in here.
Mr. Hughes covers key aspects of making scrum/XP work for data warehousing and BI projects. Giving very practical clues as to how to break down requirements, architecture, identify... Read more
Published 21 months ago by Mellow
5.0 out of 5 stars
A well-written, sure-footed guide to implementing Scrum for Data...
I found this to be an outstanding, insightful guide for adopting Agile/Scrum methodology to Data Warehouse projects. Mr. Read more
Published on November 16, 2010 by BI Meister
5.0 out of 5 stars
Must Read Book
If you want happy business users, read this book, and implement the author's methods. Agile projects deliver results to users much earlier in a project. Read more
Published on October 24, 2010 by Co Annie
1.0 out of 5 stars
Mostly a commercial writing
It is mostly a decription of writers projektmodel - very detailed og not very useful for people who is not custemors
Published on May 16, 2010 by Troels Lind
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great Insight! Defintely worth a read
I bought this book intending to gain understanding of how you can adapt a relative expensive traditional data warehouse approach to the more money orientated CEO. Read more
Published on July 13, 2009 by Mr. Jonathon Ingram
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