Managing your business intelligence project can be very difficult if you don’t have the right software to help you keep track of the project goals and progress on each task that needs to be completed in order for the project to stay on track. You will first need to determine the “who,” “what,” “when,” “where,” “how,” and “how much” of your project. By identifying the vitals of your project, you can figure out how to allocate your resources before the project even starts.
The “What” of Your Business Intelligence Project
Your project plan and how you break down the work in order to achieve your overall goal is your “what.” You will need to designate certain tasks as your “milestones” so that you can identify progress and provide important reports and key deliverables.
The “Who” of Your Project
As you assign people to each of the tasks, you will start to identify your “who.”
The “How Much” of Your BI Project
Once you have determined who on your team has the most appropriate skills to complete each task, you will need to make an estimate of how much time each task will take to complete. This is your resource budget and will give you a good idea of “how much.” Once you determine how many hours each task will take for each person, multiply the hourly or daily rate for that task by the number of man-hours it will take to complete to provide a cost budget for the task. You can assign the same person different rates for different tasks depending on the difficulty and skill level involved in completing the task.
The “When” of the Project
First, sequence the tasks, paying special attention to tasks that are dependent on the completion of another task before they can be started. Determine which tasks can run concurrently and identify when milestones should occur. Then you can put a start and end date estimates on each task and on the project as a whole.
The “Where” and “How”
The “where” and “how” are determined by the location and work force of your business. The “how” will also be determined by your business intelligence software package. Your software should be able to help you keep track of your goals and of your resources to help you keep the project on schedule.
Once you determine the vitals for your project, you can pick the software package you need. If your project is not very complicated, you probably can do without a lot of extras, but if your project is very involved, you will want to make sure that you get all the features you need to keep your project running smoothly.
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