Bringing agility to Business Intelligence Metadata as key to Agile Data Warehousing 1 P a g e
Table of Contents What is the key to agility in Data Warehousing?... 3 The need to address requirements completely.... 3 Benefits of an agile development approach to Business Intelligence... 4 How to build a Business Intelligence solution in an agile way?... 4 AnalytiX Mapping Manager... 5 The Benefits of using AnalytiX Mapping Manager in an agile environment... 7 2010, 2011, 2012 AnalytiX Data Services. All rights reserved. The information contained in this document does not constitute a contractual agreement with AnalytiX Data Services and may be modified at any time without advance notice. 2 P a g e
What is the key to agility in Data Warehousing? The ability to implement change quickly in any development method is, not only highly desirable, but necessary as every level of every organization rises to the call for better, faster and more complete insight into the customer can be heard. Developers and architects want Business Intelligence solutions which are both high-quality and high-value, and the only way to develop a high-value Business Intelligence solution is to implement the highest priority requirements first. As organizations attempt to do a lot more with a lot less, much faster than before, Business Intelligence groups everywhere have to adapt and deliver faster results by trying to adapt existing development methodologies to deliver faster results. This maximizes Return On Investment and brings the stakeholders quick wins that allow for better and faster adoption of the Business Intelligence Solution. Because requirements change constantly and quickly, the ability to manage change is key here not the ability to prevent it. Effective change management makes the Business Intelligence Solution more efficient by saving money, allowing re-use of data, fulfilling the legal and compliance requirements of the Enterprise and by supporting Enterprise analytics. And all of these have different needs. The need to address requirements completely. The primary need that must be satisfied is the ability of any method to manage requirements, completely. AnalytiX Mapping Manager is built from the beginning to accelerate the successful development and deployment of a successful Business Intelligence Solution. At the heart of its architecture is a complete requirements management solution; this allows the analysts to capture data, business and technical requirements and from these requirements, to quickly build an initial architecture model. Part of the initial architecture model resides in the conceptual design process, which is a functional Business Intelligence solution model (typically represented by a data flow diagram that defines the overall solution. The other is the data model, which defines the data related design issues of the system. In order to deploy a Business Intelligence solution, you need to be able to translate these data, business and technical requirements into a complete conceptual and logical data model that can be physicalized. The ability to address requirements and adapt to change quickly is a key foundational item in AnalytiX Mapping Manager that has been built from the early beginning as an integral part of the solution. This allows the architecture, analysis, development and test teams to deploy the Business Intelligence solution quickly and 3 P a g e
completely in a cooperative manner while allowing integration team a software solution alternative to the traditional Microsoft excel based templates used to cumbersomely address the source to target mapping (STM) problem. This results in organizations ability to manage the data mapping process and have better insight and visibility into the data mapping process by storing source to target mappings in a versionable data mapping repository. As new requirements are discovered or existing ones are changed in the critical requirements phase, AnalytiX Mapping Manager tracks and versions these changes and determines impact to the existing BI solution. Benefits of a an agile development approach to Business Intelligence The success of implementing a Business Intelligence Solution quickly goes well beyond just reducing cost and time to market. It increases the overall quality of the solution being delivered as it allows for users and stakeholders to control the delivery process by reviewing the solution as it is actually built. Success of the Business Intelligence program is critically dependent upon doing the following: a) Focusing on the requirements first, then driving the details around them b) Proving the architecture and solution early c) Focusing on usability and completeness d) Organizing the solution in logical building blocks e) Prioritizing the requirements f) Allowing the architecture, analysis, development and test teams to cooperate and participate g) Managing change Although this all seems relatively easy and straight-forward, how do you achieve success in building a successful Business Intelligence solution in a non-intrusive and agile way? Companies that focus on the data and work forward to the reporting and analytic layers of the data integration architecture are far more likely to succeed in terms of reduced implementation costs and in exceeding the expectations of users and management as well as being compliant with regulations. How to build a Business Intelligence solution in an agile way? On our initial white paper we focused around the use of AnalytiX Mapping Manager as an enabler for the data governance program. Today we will focus on using AnalytiX Mapping Manager as an enabler for rapid deployment of a Business Intelligence solution. AnalytiX Mapping Manager is much more than what the name implies: a data mapping tool or a mapping management tool. AnalytiX Mapping Manager is an enterprise-level source to target mapping 4 P a g e
tool that allows the management of all metadata related to sources, targets and business rules associated with the data and information reporting needs of the enterprise as well as a centralized metadata repository capable of improving the speed with which an organization deploys a Business Intelligence solution. AnalytiX Mapping Manager What is AnalytiX Mapping Manager and how can it help deploy a complex Business Intelligence solution quickly? By bringing a requirements traceability matrix and logical data model generator, by generating source to target maps and data integration scripts from them. AnalytiX Mapping Manager Agile process flow Requirements Conduct business requirements sessions Conduct reporting requirements interviews Identify metrics and supporting data elements Document requirements and traceability matrix Build the conceptual data model Analysis Perform source data profiling Perform data and information gap analysis Collect source data definitions Identify target data elements, relationships, hierarchies and build Source to Target maps Build the logical data model Development DEPLOY Test Validate physical data model Document database design changes Create or change functional specs for data integration processes Generate transform programs from existing source to target maps Perform Unit Test Execute integration and usability test cases Verify integration test issues Verify usability test issues Identify and document required changes Resubmit to Requirements and reinitiate cycle The highly simplified AnalytiX Mapping Manager process model above demonstrates how a team of architects, analysts, developers and testers can bring a Business Intelligence Solution to market. In order to bring agility to the Business Intelligence solution, AnalytiX Mapping Manager allows for quick 5 P a g e
Documentation of data, business and technical requirements and automatic generation of a logical data model form these requirements Elimination of the excel based mapping templates. Documentation of data mappings, aggregations and transformation rules Change Control and versioning of data mappings and requirements Definition, documentation and creation a central repository of data dictionaries, business terms, rules, data elements, KPI s and metrics Establishment of data and information requirements Better insight into the data mapping and integration lifecycle process via repository reports AnalytiX Mapping Manager can easily provide, by virtue of its architecture, significant improvement over traditional methods that use spreadsheets, documents or decoupled metadata management solutions. AnalytiX Mapping Manager improves efficiency in processes, people and solution deployment - not only in the analysis, design and development phases of integration, but also in downstream work flow management and regulatory reporting as we have seen in previous articles. Typically, all metadata management tools provide some sort of repository and can import and export data definitions from sources and targets. What they typically lack is a set of well defined processes to accelerate development and deployment and the ability to manage change. AnalytiX Mapping Manager is a purpose built tool for governing the data mapping process and bridges the gap between leveraging metadata, and making the data definition and acquisition processes automated, disciplined and predictable to all data enterprise stakeholders via its web enabled portal. 6 P a g e Figure: Governance of the data mapping process
The Benefits of using AnalytiX Mapping Manager in an agile environment There are varied benefits from using AnalytiX Mapping Manager to accelerate deployment of a Business Intelligence solution, by providing the following: The ability to accelerate project delivery by automating the source to target data mapping process and eradicating the hundreds to thousands of excel based mapping templates. The ability to give management better insight and visibility into the end to end process of integration projects the ability to create, maintain and consolidate data dictionaries for all enterprise systems, the ability to quickly create and version source to target mappings (STM) and use these STM documents to automatically generate data integration processes with leading ETL tool Providers like Informatica PowerCenter, IBM DataStage and Microsoft SQL Server SSIS the ability to quickly view data lineage, run impact analysis and manage change 7 P a g e
For further information, please contact Analytix Data Services Corporate HQ 14175 Sullyfield Circle, Suite # 400 Chantilly, VA 20151 USA Tel: 1+ (800)-656-9860 Email: info@analytixds.com SALES For Sales - Please call (800)-603-4790 (9am-5pm EST) or Email: sales@analytixds.com SUPPORT 8 P a g e For Product Support - Please call (800)-617-9620 or Email: support@analytixds.com