 |
| Business Intelligence Series |
One of the critics addressed to the BI/Data Analytics, Data Engineering and even Data Science fields is their resistance to applying Software Engineering (SE) methods in practice. SE can be regarded as the application of sound methods, methodologies, techniques, principles, and practices to obtain high quality economic software in a reproducible manner. At minimum, should be applied SE techniques and practices proven to work, for example the use of best practices, reference technologies, standardized processes for requirements gathering and management, etc. This doesn't mean that one should apply the full extent of SE but consider a minimum that makes sense to adopt.
Unfortunately, the creation of data artifacts (queries, reports, data models, data pipelines, data visualizations, etc.) as process seem to be done after the principle of least action, though least action means here the minimum interaction to push pieces on a board rather than getting the things done. At high level, the process is as follows: get the requirements, build something, present results, get more requirements, do changes, present the results, and the process is repeated ad infinitum.
Given that data artifact's creation finds itself at the intersection of two or more knowledge areas in which knowledge is exchanged in several iterations between the parties involved until a common ground is achieved, this process is totally inefficient from multiple perspectives. First of all, it takes considerably more time than planned to reach a solution, resources being wasted in the process, multiple forms of waste being involved. Secondly, the exchange and retention of knowledge resulting from the process is minimal, mainly on a need by basis. This might look as an efficient approach on the short term, but is inefficient overall.
BI reflects the general issues from SE - most of the issues can be traced back to requirements - if the requirements are incorrect and there's no magic involved in between, then one can't expect for the solution to be correct. The bigger the difference between the initial and final requirements elicited in the process, the more resources are wasted. The more time passes between the start of the development phase and the time a solution is presented to the customer, the longer it takes to build the final solution. Same impact have the time it takes to establish a common ground and other critical factors for success involved in the process.
One can address these issues through better requirements elicitation, rapid prototyping, the use of agile methodologies and similar approaches, though the general feeling is that even if they bring improvements, they don't address the root causes - lack of data literacy skills, lack of knowledge about the business, lack of maturity in planning and executing tasks, the inexistence of well-designed processes and procedures, respectively the lack of an engineering mindset.
These inefficiencies have low impact when building a report occasionally, though they accumulate and tend to create systemic issues in what concerns the overall BI effort. They are addressed locally by experts and in general through a strategic approach like the elaboration of a BI strategy, though organizations seldom pay attention to them. Some organizations consider that they are automatically addressed as part of the data culture, though data culture focuses in general on data literacy and not on the whole set of assumptions mentioned above.
An experienced data professional sees more likely the inefficiencies, tries to address them locally in his interactions with the various stakeholders, he/she can build a business case for addressing them, though it depends on organizations to recognize that they have a problem, respective address the inefficiencies in a strategic and systemic manner!
Previous Post <<||>> Next Post
No comments:
Post a Comment