You thought it would be hard to go through a Business Intelligence project in an organization. Maybe it is easier than thought… when you change focus!

Here are 5 safe ways to destroy your Business Intelligence project – guaranteed!

5. Never ever talk to the stakeholders

Why even bother talking to the department colleagues if they don’t know what they want upfront? They should make up their mind and provide a well-structured requirement list to you! Even if they do, it is in the best interest of all just to assume that those requirements are correct and remain unchanged.

Also it is completely senseless to talk to the stakeholders because most of the time they have no idea what they want. The good ol‘ „just collect all the data first, then I am gonna tell you what I need“ is the way to go.

4. Focus only on the tools and not on the processes or data

Data quality is a mess in the business? Weeee – just buy some tool and everything will be fine. No one should work on processes or data governance if not absolutely needed.

You have seen it, it is possible – that one guy in this other firm just bought Tableau and the CEO and everyone else started using it. And that is Business Intelligence par excellence. Right? RIGHT?

3. Create something in the basement – just for you

All this agile mess, all those short iterations to provide value to the company. Forget about it. Just sit down right in front of your computer, fire up your favorite programming tool, create some tables in a database you will tell no one about and do what you need. Or better, do what you think the business needs. In the end, you are the ultimate person who knows how things are running in your business.

2. Ignore the C-level

Why, oh why should one get backup from the CEO, CFO or CIO when doing a Business Intelligence project? You just need yourself, your brains and a loud voice if other departments or areas of your business get resistant.

This is especially true for new colleagues which try to bring value to the Business Intelligence department. It’s not important that some manager has your back when things go politically in the wrong way – just bribe your way through the process and get loud when things won’t go into the correct direction. Which you know of course.

1. Use a data warehouse which is unable to change over time

Oh, this is the sweet spot of sooo many Business Intelligence projects. But – of course – in our case, when we use the same approach (for example using a Star Schema for a very, very big Data Warehouse), we cannot fail! We will be different!

Eh – ok, we did not take into consideration that the business can change very rapidly. Ok, new IT infrastructure has to be added? Whew, that will take some more time (and some more testing)… actually, how the Data Warehouse looks right now, it should not be changed anymore. DON’T EVEN LOOK AT IT! And wait – what did you mean by „metadata“?

When you respect those simple steps, I guarantee you your Business Intelligence project will be over in no time! Oh and please, obviously: don’t take this article seriously.

Photo by wackybadger