TDWI on Agile vs. “Organizational Agility”

Recent papers from Forrester and Gartner on the topic of Agile BI highlight the BI market’s increased focus on this new approach to business intelligence. Many people are talking about Agile BI and everybody seems to think it’s appealing as a concept, even if there is less than complete consensus on the meaning of the phrase. TDWI recently interviewed Maureen Clarry of CONNECT about how organizations can get more agile through BI. It’s worth reading in its entirety, but we highlight a few intriguing insights below, and add our perspective.

One of the critical factors for business success is the organization’s ability to scan the external environment to anticipate changes required for survival … By paying attention to the external environment and anticipating the future, the business can adapt its products and services to fit not just the current market but the future market.

Such big-picture thinking is a useful reminder of why BI is important. Too often, the BI community is so focused on technology and delivery concerns (which are important, of course) that it loses perspective. BI is critical because it helps business leaders make good decisions that improve performance, both immediately and over the long term.

In order to be agile, you actually need to … be both consistent and adaptable. That requires a balanced perspective on how to put appropriate standards and processes in place that can support speed, change and consistency.

It’s a nice counterintuitive point: standardized data definitions are especially valuable when the time comes for rapid decision making; you don’t have to waste time debating the meaning of “revenue” or “customer.” But organizations make a commitment upfront to nail down those meanings.

[One of the biggest mistakes organizations make is] confusing Agile with a capital A and organizational agility … we sometimes see BI organizations that use Agile methodology as an excuse so that they don’t have to define standards or document anything. This is another example of trading speed and adaptability for standardization and reuse. It does not need to be an either/or proposition.

The Agile methodology offers best practices that can help BI delivery succeed, but Maureen is right that being more agile is not about cutting corners on documentation and standardization. The challenge we have taken on at Balanced Insight is to provide a software platform that enables BI teams to be more agile while improving their level of cross-project standardization and the richness of their solution documentation. Balanced Insight Consensus facilitates business-focused Agile BI delivery, while at the same time providing a mechanism to generate rich documentation and organically converge projects toward enterprise standards.

Taken as a whole, Clarry’s remarks highlight the fundamental evolution now taking place in the BI space. There is widespread opportunity for BI projects to deliver more value, but also natural uncertainty about a profound shift to new approaches for development and delivery. In fact, the last part of the interview is focused on change management, which highlights the scale and potential impact of the shift toward Agile BI.