Business Intelligence Roadmap: The Complete Project Lifecycle for Decision-Support Applications (Paperback)

~ Larissa T. Moss (Author), Shaku Atre (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Provides a complete methodology for everything from strategic planning to the selection of new technologies and the evaluation of application releases. A visual guide to developing an effective BI decision-support application. Softcover. CD-ROM included.

From the Back Cover

"If you are looking for a complete treatment of business intelligence, then go no further than this book. Larissa T. Moss and Shaku Atre have covered all the bases in a cohesive and logical order, making it easy for the reader to follow their line of thought. From early design to ETL to physical database design, the book ties together all the components of business intelligence."
--Bill Inmon, Inmon Enterprises

Business Intelligence Roadmap is a visual guide to developing an effective business intelligence (BI) decision-support application. This book outlines a methodology that takes into account the complexity of developing applications in an integrated BI environment. The authors walk readers through every step of the process--from strategic planning to the selection of new technologies and the evaluation of application releases. The book also serves as a single-source guide to the best practices of BI projects.

Part I steers readers through the six stages of a BI project: justification, planning, business analysis, design, construction, and deployment. Each chapter describes one of sixteen development steps and the major activities, deliverables, roles, and responsibilities. All technical material is clearly expressed in tables, graphs, and diagrams.

Part II provides five matrices that serve as references for the development process charted in Part I. Management tools, such as graphs illustrating the timing and coordination of activities, are included throughout the book. The authors conclude by crystallizing their many years of experience in a list of dos, don'ts, tips, and rules of thumb. The accompanying CD-ROM includes a complete, customizable work breakdown structure.

Both the book and the methodology it describes are designed to adapt to the specific needs of individual stakeholders and organizations. The book directs business representatives, business sponsors, project managers, and technicians to the chapters that address their distinct responsibilities. The framework of the book allows organizations to begin at any step and enables projects to be scheduled and managed in a variety of ways.

Business Intelligence Roadmap is a clear and comprehensive guide to negotiating the complexities inherent in the development of valuable business intelligence decision-support applications.

0201784203B02112003

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Product Details

• Paperback: 576 pages
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional (March 7, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0201784203
• ISBN-13: 978-0201784206
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.4 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #47,524 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very action oriented, November 26, 2003

By	W Boudville (Terra, Sol 3) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Very action oriented. The prose is concise and to the point. A key feature is that at the start of each chapter is a ticklist of action items to do or at least be aware of, for that chapter's topic. This may have value to you, from a management viewpoint. Also similarly useful are the extensive tables at the back of the book, that complement the ticklists.

For me, the most relevant sections were those describing metadata and how this is commonly defined and used by people in the data mining/business intelligence community. I enjoyed the description of a metadata repository/silo as a navigation tool.

The book is readily accessible to a nontechnical manager. There is little mathematical jargon, and there are clear explanations of common data mining techniques. Enough so that you can converse intelligently with personnel in that field. A strength of the book is that is lets you understand and direct a technical team, in a top-down fashion, driven by business imperatives, rather than by technical capabilities.

25 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Must for Every BI/DW Professional, April 19, 2003

By	Dipendra Malhotra (Toronto, Ontario, Canada) - See all my reviews

It is refreshing to read a book that presents in-depth techniques for developing a BI application from cradle to grave in a continuous evolutionary process. Various matrices and WBS samples in Part II of the book serve as a quick reference for iterative planning and delivering of decision-support systems.The authors have done a phenomenal job in integrating business, technical,and management aspects of a BI and decision-support system to present an exhaustive set of guidelines.

After working with numerous clients and having read Inmon's Building the Data Warehouse, Kimball's The Data Warehouse Lifecycle Toolkit as well as various BI white papers, I know that data ETL and data warehouses are a major part of any BI strategy. However, after reviewing the summary of over 20 BI related books, I found that the primary focus of many BI books is normally limited to data presentation and analytical layers only.This book is an exception .

I would recommend this book to expert as well as novice DW/BI professionals alike, who may be business users, data analysts, architects, project managers, statisticians,or executive stakeholders.

22 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars This map covers a lot of territory, June 1, 2004

By	Gary Sprandel (Frankfort, Kentucky) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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This book is impressive in its scope! Starting with the business justification of the project, Moss and Atre emphasize requirements, metadata, and extraction/transformation/ and load. In each chapter is a good overview, things to consider, relation to other steps of the plan, and a clear list of deliverables and the personnel (the roles) involved in each of the steps. Each chapter also offers rules of thumb that could only have been come from someone experienced with setting up a Business Intelligence Solution. Perhaps most important to a project manager tempted to cut out a step, is a warning about the risk of omitting the step.

Each chapter should NOT be thought of as an in-depth analysis of the topic (for example, there are just 4 pages discussing the star versus the snowflake schema when discussing database design), but rather as a map of the steps that need to be done. I was particularly impressed with the metadata discussions, which emphasize testing of the metadata repository, the role of metadata in navigation and context-sensitive-help at the element level, and the use of multiple sources to generate the metadata. The common emphasis on reviews, involvement of the business sponsors, and testing throughout the process was great! The discussion on three parallel development tracks seemed optimistic, as I was not sure that the application track is completely independent of the Extraction/transformation/load steps until the final implementation step. The book probably also should have emphasized security earlier in the process. This book offers a good plan, and I would be happy if our Business Intelligence projects followed the plan laid out here!!