Agile Methods for BI Delivering Higher ROI, Earlier Results, User Adoption

Michael Taylor – Practice Area Lead Business Intelligence With input from Gareth Cook – Agile Thought Leader and Project Mgr.

Agenda

▴ Who are Tridant?

▴ What has led us towards Agile

▴ Essence of Agile and Key Techniques for BI

▴ Agile BI lessons from the field

▴ Tools for Automation

▴ Agile Case Studies

▴ Q&A at our booth

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Who are Tridant?

▴ Established in 2007 as a Business Analytics Implementer

▴ 58 employees, 51 consultants nationally

▴ Facilities in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth

▴ Numerous awards for Project Success

▴ Breadth of competencies:

- Business Intelligence

- Financial Performance Management

- Information Management

- Project Management

- Predictive Analytics

- Helpdesk and Support Services

What has led us towards Agile

▴ Stating our requirements up-front can be difficult

▴ Quick wins, frequent deliverables; keep people engaged

▴ Workshops alone – not always engaging

▴ Agile Iterative Prototyping aids visualisation

▴ We’re becoming allergic to excessive documentation, say it on a card instead

▴ Embracing change

▴ Simplicity – 80% matters, 20% is low ‘bang for buck’

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5

Waterfall

Agile

ANALYSE

DESIGN

BUILD

TEST

ITERATION 0 ITERATION 1 ITERATION 2 ITERATION 3

Epic

-lev

el

req

uir

emen

ts

Bac

klo

g Analyse

Design/Build/Test

Deploy

Design/Build/Test

Deploy

Design/Build/Test

Deploy

Analyse Analyse

▴ Agile Techniques

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Gathering Requirements in Agile

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▴ Epic An epic is a large user story that needs to be broken down into smaller stories or a collection of user stories that can be grouped together.

▴ User Story Describes the basic need of a user and how it might be satisfied.

Perform Mortgage Book Analysis

I want to see details

on the Mortgage Holder(s)

Include Loan $ paid vs. owing

Graph of top/bottom

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Epic

User Stories

AS A :

I WANT :

SO THAT:

“Card Name”

Who the user is, what is their role, how they are related to the project?

What is the requirement?

How is this requirement going to be used or what will it enable?

AS A: Book Hirer I WANT: The Library to stay open until 9pm SO THAT: I can return my books after I finish work late

Late Returns of Books

This statement provides greater clarity on the reason behind the requirement, and potential alternate solutions (e.g. after hrs. return slot)

User suggesting the solution

AS A: Collections Officer I WANT: To see a full list of all customers that have mortgages SO THAT: I can identify those who are behind by 3 or more repayments

Mortgage Default Report

The “So That” is the critical statement

AS A: Conference Attendee I WANT: Friday afternoon to go quickly SO THAT: We can go to drinks already!

FST Conference Objective #4

The “So That” is the critical statement

Agile Snapshot – Prioritising Requirements

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Priority

1 First to

implement

Note: the axis measures swap from one Priority Map to another

Lead times and dependencies need to be considered

Priority

2

Priority

3 Priority

2

Hig

h

Low

Hig

h

Low

High Low High Low

TIM

E C

RIT

ICA

LITY

DEL

IVER

Y R

ISK

IMPORTANCE SOLUTION COMPLEXITY

The Agile Card wall or ‘Kanban’ wall

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▴ Lessons Learned from the Field

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Agile Estimation Techniques

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▴ Fibonacci sequence 1,2,3,5,8, 13,21

▴ T-Shirt Sizes

▴ Agile Heart Beat - Best guess for your first iteration

- Complete 2-3 iterations, then calculate average progress to develop your “Heart Beat” or “Velocity” – the number of story points per iteration or sprint.

S M L

XL

Too Large for a single Iteration and needs to be broken down (EPICS)

A combination can be used in an iteration as long as it does not equal or is greater than 8, or > Large.

Allows for more contingency the larger the work.

Team structure is vitally important

▴ Working closely with the business/customer allows for a better end-product

▴ “Get the right people on the bus”

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Core Team Extended Team

Backlog

USER STORY

USER STORY

You can mix techniques

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Testing

Build (Generic Steps for all Stories)

In progress In review Done

Analyse

Design

Build

Test Scheduled Time

The Daily Stand-up Meeting

▴ The ‘secret sauce’ of Agile

▴ Should be run by an experienced Agile Practitioner

Each and every person answers three questions:

▴ What did I achieve yesterday?

▴ What am I going to achieve today?

▴ What will stop me from achieving my goals?

▴ No more than 1/2 an hour

▴ Everyone must participate to be effective

▴ Held standing up so that they are kept short and everyone is visible

An effective method of doing a stand-up is in front of a card wall.

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Leverage Tools for automation

▴ Trello for online multi-user Agile tracking

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Come to our Booth for a demo

Leverage Tools for automation

▴ Balsamiq for rapid Requirement Gathering mockups

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Come to our Booth for a demo

Smart People - Win an i’m Watch

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Come have a chat at our booth & enter our competition to win the latest in smartwatch technology an i’m Watch

“Smart Watch Smart People”

Breaking News! At our booth…

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On display, IBM’s new Business Analytics Visualisation engine currently in the labs for future release!

To learn more contact Michael.Taylor@tridant.com.au