0. Field-Tested Techniques for Gathering and Interpreting Dashboard Requirements Singapore – Oct 2014
Dr. Bjarne Berg
COMERIT

1. What We’ll Cover Introduction
Dashboard approaches — Agile, JAD, and RAD
Getting the right requirements
Where to start?
A real-world example
Wrap-up
Let’s begin with features of Query Designer

2. In This Session
Get best practice rules for conducting dashboard scoping sessions to effectively gather requirements from all stakeholders
Learn how to get the right dashboard requirements and how to use Agile, Joint Application Development (JAD), and Rapid Application Development (RAD)
Criteria to map dashboard features and functionality to your specific requirements, depending on whether you are leveraging SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards, SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio, or SAP Lumira
What is covered in this session?
Advanced tips and trick in Query designer and BEx Analyzer
The advanced tips and tricks are explained using business scenarios
Overlooked and obscure features are brought to limelight
Lots of demos to explain BExGetData and other topics

3. What We’ll Cover Introduction
Dashboard approaches — Agile, JAD, and RAD
Getting the right requirements
Where to start?
A real-world example
Wrap-up
Let’s begin with features of Query Designer

4. Who Gets to Do What?
The major decision for an SAP BI-driven enterprise is to determine who gets access to each tool
There is often a temptation for the IT community of wanting to keep the tools under their domain – That is a mistake
The IT community should actively work with the power and casual users to improve human capabilities and thereby teach them to become more productive employees

5. The Dashboards Business Requirements
Business requirements can be collected in a variety of ways based on the methodology that the company employs
It is a complex process and involves the following periods:
Discovery and education
Formal communication
Prototypes and reviews
Final approvals
A dashboard implementation does not simply involve a series of black-and-white technical decisions; just because something is technically feasible does not mean it is wise or desirable from a business perspective
Source: Gooy_GUI, 2007

6. The JAD, RAD, Agile (XP), or ASAP Methodologies
There are several options for the SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards project
Joint Application Design (JAD)
Rapid Application Development (RAD)
Agile or Extreme Programming (XP)
Accelerated SAP Methodology/System Development Lifecycle (SDLC)
Many of the methodologies are not appropriate for the dashboard development effort
Pick your SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards methodology carefully. Do not use ASAP unless your project is part of a budgeting, consolidation, or planning effort.

7. The “Waterfall Methodologies” Are Not Good for Dashboards
The System Development Lifecycle (SDLC) methodologies, such as ASAP, are known collectively as “waterfall methodologies”
They give a false sense of clear-cut stages, and do not address substantial functionality changes during development
It is hard to fix missing functionality during integration testing
The waterfall
Source: SAP
The challenge with ASAP is that users don’t know what they want until they see it …

8. The ASAP Methodology Overview

9. Joint Application Design (JAD) — Who Participates?
Facilitator — Facilitates discussions, enforces rules
End Users — Three to five, attend all sessions
Developers — Two or three, question for clarity
Tie Breaker — Senior manager; breaks end-user ties, doesn’t attend
Observers — Two or three, do not speak
SMEs — A few subject matter experts (SMEs) for understanding business and technology
Keep it very focused and explore the interfaces. How do the users want to see the screen layouts and functionality?
A study of 60 development projects found that, without JAD, 35% of the functionality was missed
(Source: Caper Jones, Software Quality, Reliability, and Error Prediction )

10. Rapid Application Development (RAD)
RAD has an abbreviated blueprinting phase where meetings are executed in short succession to get the requirements
Most of the blueprinting and realization phases of the project are combined
The first meeting: A one or two-day work session with uninterrupted time
Who: Power users, casual users, people who today interact with the current system, and managers who have a stake in the outcome of the dashboards
How many: A rapid pace is kept in these meetings and the number of attendees is kept to no more than seven people in attendance
The coordinators should focus on shared information needs and conduct multiple sessions (typically once a week)
Why RAD? Increase involvement, less business disruption, less opinions, more consensus, information sharing, and an education event

11. Agile and Extreme Programming
XP was started by programmers who decided that the traditional requirements gathering sessions took too much time, and often just verified what they already knew
The argument for XP is that other methodologies were developed to build software for low levels of change and reasonably predictable outcomes
But the business world is no longer very predictable, and software requirements change at extremely high rates
Development can be completed faster with collaborative efforts of paired programmers with small “sprint” timelines and many go-lives
The core premise of Agile is that you can only pick three out of these four dimensions: cost, quality, scope, and time

12. Framework for Picking a Dashboard Methodology
I.e. Scrum and Agile

13. What We’ll Cover Introduction
Dashboard approaches — Agile, JAD, and RAD
Getting the right requirements
Where to start?
A real-world example
Wrap-up
Let’s begin with features of Query Designer

14. Where Do You Start? — First Alternative
You can start with a blank template and fill in the capabilities
Focus on graphs, layout, measures, and navigation
One method is to write storyboards from a user perspective and add needed functionality to support this

15. Where Do You Start? — Second Alternative — Step 1
Get a group of 5-7 people for a brainstorming session
Draw the solution, knowing that it may look somewhat different once developed
Focus on the use of space, graphs, navigation, available data, and the purpose of the dashboards
Do not design fixed-format “reports”

16. Building a Mockup in Excel — Step 2
If you can make a “mockup” in Excel, users can see what it may look like in SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards (formerly Xcelsius)
Users can now see what it may look like

17. Prototyping the Dashboard Requirements — Step 3
Once the first day of brainstorming is done, you can create data in Excel and prototype the solution in SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards
Focus on layout, space management, colors, and basic formatting
Plan for multiple weekly prototypes before you get the solution that everyone can agree on

18. What We’ll Cover Introduction
Dashboard approaches — Agile, JAD, and RAD
Getting the right requirements
Where to start?
A real-world example
Wrap-up
Let’s begin with features of Query Designer

19. Flexible Options to Meet Many Requirements
There are often disagreements on how to present numbers and graphs
Make your dashboard flexible and present data in many interactive ways
Amount vs. Percentages
Different graphs
Users can select what they want graphed

20. Creating Dashboard Standards
A dashboard template should be developed that standardizes the font, colors, button locations, navigations, and tabs. Spend serious time on this; it should become the global standard for all your dashboards. 20

21. Senior Management — Graphical Dashboards
Dashboards for the senior management should be very graphically oriented
Consider using logos and images instead of text for this purpose
Navigation should be very simple
For senior managers, the ability to interact with the data (what-if), and see performance numbers relative to plan, budgets, and prior years are critical functionalities 21

22. Divide and Get Performance
Link to Details WebI reports
Drill-down options
Split your dashboards into logical units. This keeps the result set for each query small and also decreases the load time for each dashboard.

23. Build Several Dashboards for Each Functional Area
Avoid trying to create a single dashboard for each functional area
You will normally need 3-5 dashboards for areas such as accounts receivables, accounts payables, purchasing, sales orders, invoices, shipping, etc.
Build 2 to 5 WebI reports for more details and link them to the dashboards so that navigation is easy for end users 23

24. Operational Dashboards
Dashboards can be operational
This dashboard focuses on billing disputes and is used to monitor closing of cases
The users of this dashboard are clerks in the billing office, not executives
Some dashboards are operational in nature and give a summary of the key metrics and new cases as they occur. Such dashboards works best when data is refreshed often or real-time.

25. The Dashboards User Acceptance Testing (UAT) Form
By requiring each of the five to seven UAT members to complete a form for each dashboard, you get solid feedback that you can use in the next RAD development cycle
During each UAT test cycle, you should solicit detailed feedback on layout, graphs, theme, tables, and navigation

26. Dashboards on SAP HANA
Let’s begin with features of Query Designer

27. SAP Lumira — Visualizations and Interactive Development
With SAP Lumira you can create graphs on-the-fly and get requirements while building them You can also create many graphs and put them together on a report
This means that you can represent the same data in many ways, and do not need to force an agreement on requirements from all users

28. SAP Lumira — Complex Visualizations and Requirements
Since Lumira is much more interactive and it is very simple to change graphs, you can build your visualization together with the users They can then provide you feedback while you are designing in a collaborative manner

29. SAP Lumira — Getting Feedback
You can also share your work products with others and get their feedback
You can even use the SAP Lumira Cloud solution to publish your visualizations and solicit feedback

30. Delivering Requirements with Design Studio
With Design Studio you can build almost anything the user wants
This tools does not lend itself to interactive prototyping sessions like Lumira. Instead, it gives you total flexibility to meet complex requirements.

31. Design Studio — Standard Templates, Look, and Feel
When building a set of dashboards in DesignStudio it is very important to first agree on the standards, color palate, button locations, and standard graphs used
If you don’t standardize the look and feel before you start, there is a high probability that each dashboard will function differently and users will get frustrated trying to use them

32. Design Studio — Using External Objects to Meet Requirements
Sometimes the objects or maps you need are not available in Design Studio. You can then incorporate these from other sources using HTML5.
In this Dashboard example, the map requirements were met by using an external set of maps from a 3rd party vendor. Design Studio allows you to simply integrate this.

33. What We’ll Cover Introduction
Dashboard approaches — Agile, JAD, and RAD
Getting the right requirements
Where to start?
A real-world example
Wrap-up
Let’s begin with features of Query Designer

34. A Real-World Example This project is for travel expense analysis
The color codes communicate changes, year over year
Graphs can be displayed in many ways
Navigation can be done and can get new query result sets
This dashboard is based only on BW query and BICS connector; the cube is now in SAP HANA and the dashboard, therefore, loads in less than 12 seconds

35. A Real-World Example (cont.)
Dashboards are most useful when compared to something
This dashboard is relative to a budget
Notice that all graphs can be displayed in many ways and that color coding is consistent across the dashboards
Make sure layout, buttons, and colors are consistently used

36. A Real-World Example (cont.)
This dashboard groups six different categories and over 30 lines into an easily readable table using a few lines and mostly colors
Too many lines and incorrect use of “bold” makes dashboards very hard to read
Don’t cram too much into a single dashboard. Plan on multiple dashboards for each business area.

37. A Real-World Example (cont.)
Changes over time are typically tracked in the dashboards
Don’t just present numbers, plan on only showing changes
I.e., in amounts
and percentages
In this dashboard, the graphs are sometimes hard to read, so filter selections were added. Use these carefully, since they are slow and make Flash files large. A better solution would be to use Design Studio to meet these requirements.

38. Go-Live Planning for the Dashboards Initiative
During the planning phase, you should also start planning your go-live strategy
This includes answering the following questions:
Where are my users located?
What is the network capacity?
Do I need support people for extended time periods — Different time zones?
Do I need multi-currency support on my dashboards?
Do I need multi-language support?
What type of users do I have in each region?
Create a user map as part of your project planning. This will help you understand your user base.

39. What We’ll Cover Introduction
Dashboard approaches — Agile, JAD, and RAD
Getting the right requirements
Where to start?
A real-world example
Wrap-up
Let’s begin with features of Query Designer

40. Where to find more information
Creating Dashboards with SAP BusinessObjects - The Comprehensive Guide, book by Ray Li and Evan DeLodder, SAP Press, ISBN
Getting Started with SAP BusinessObjects Design Studio, book by Xavier Hacking, Jeroen van der A, SAP Press, ISBN
SAP Dashboard on SAP Community Network
SAP Lumira on SAP Community Network –
SAP BusinessObjects DesignStudio on SAP Community Network –

41. 7 Key Points to Take Home
Requirements gathering is interactive, and users are discovering what they want – Show them many demos
Use a RAD, JAD, or XP approach for your dashboards requirements gathering process and development
Have multiple meetings with the user groups to gather requirements
Build interactive prototypes and expect requirements changes
Plan for a formal user acceptance testing of the dashboards
Have a roll-out plan and a long-term vision of how to get there
Spend serious time planning for support and on-going enhancements of your dashboards, or they will become useless in a very short time …

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How to contact me:
Dr. Bjarne Berg
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43. Disclaimer
SAP and other SAP products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP SE (or an SAP affiliate company) in Germany and other countries. All other product and service names mentioned are the trademarks of their respective companies. Wellesley Information Services is neither owned nor controlled by SAP SE.