1. What You Should Know About Business Intelligence – This Isn’t the Same Profession When You Started
Lewis F. McLain, Jr.
CityBase.Net, Inc.
Finance Roundtable
NCTCOG
March 9, 2012

2. Disclaimers & Credits
Slides that have the Collin College and KnowledgeFlight logos are the property of Tim Smith, a Collin College Instructor and Co-Founder of KnowledgeFlight Consulting. They are being used with permission.
Knowledge Management and Business Intelligence are terms that incorporate a huge array of topics, concepts and practices. This presentation is intended to just introduce a small portion of the subjects.
Hey, if you are a small shop and your accounting system is QuickBooks and your BI tool is constrained to Excel (bless your heart!), you can still benefit from this presentation.

3. How to Make A Lot of Money
Charge people for using the word “Sustainability” if they can’t be specific about what they mean.
Charge people who use the words “Smart Growth” if they can explain it without using the word “Smart.”
Charge people who use the words “Business Intelligence” and can’t explain the process.

4. The BI Train is Leaving the Station Are You on IT?

5. An Assessment of the Accounting Profession
Record. (A+)
Classify. (A-)
Summarize. (A on required, D on elective)
Analyze. (D)

6. New York Times Best Seller List

7. What’s Happening Here?
Legacy OLTP Systems are Loaded with Years of Unanalyzed Data.
Incredibly Powerful User-Oriented Analytical Packages are Rushing to Us at Reasonable Prices.
Business Oriented Council Members are Using BI Tools in Their Jobs. Many are being provided by iPads by the City.
You are at Risk for Others Telling You about Your Business.
College Students are Graduating with New Talents, Skills, Interests, Expectations.
Some IT Departments and Some Fiscal Departments are Learning about Collaboration and Data Knowledge Management.
Every Leading Software Package of the Future has or will have BI Features.
You May Think You Can’t Afford the Time, Effort & Money for BI, but You May Not be Able to Afford to Ignore IT.

9. A Big Part of the Challenge – the Lingo
BI – Business Intelligence.
OLTP – Online Transaction Processing.
OLAP – Online Application (Analytical) Processing.
SQL – Structured Query Language.
SQL Server – Software Product to Store & Retrieve Data.
DW – Data Warehouse.
ETL – Extract, Transform and Load.
Flat File – Text, Comma Separated Values (CSV).
OLE DB – Object Linking & Embedding Database (SQL, Access).
ODBC Open Database Connectivity.
DBMS – Database Management Systems.

10. A Big Part of the Challenge – the Lingo
SSMS – SQL Server Management Services.
SSIS – SQL Server Integration Services.
SSAS – SQL Server Analytical Services.
SSRS – SQL Server Reporting Services.
SME – Subject Matter Expert.
ODS – Operational Data Store.
Schema – Data/Table Structure & Relationships.
Metadata – Data About (Descriptive, Structural & Administrative) Data.
BICC – Business Intelligence Competency Center.
Grain – The Level of Detail (Granularity).

11. How Many Data Sources Do You Have?
Core Accounting System.
Utility Billing System.
Municipal Court System.
Project Accounting Systems.
Human Resource Systems.
Recreation Program Systems.
Library Systems.
Police Dispatch Systems.
Dozens More.
But What About Those (hundreds, thousands?) Side Excel Spreadsheets and Access Databases that Only One Person Understands?

12. The Maturity Model is our end goal.

13. Common components of the data warehouse include a staging area, operational data store (ODS), dimensional model (Kimball), and cube technology. The data warehouse also includes of a process that extracts, transforms, and loads (ETL) data to these environments. We will be discussing the typical Ralph Kimball Methodology in class, with a primary focus on the Dimensional Model and the ETL Processes.

14. Information Ombudsperson.
Business Analyst
Information Ombudsperson.
Is a communicator. Especially in written forms. Presentations.
Willing to learn how departments work.
Knows what managers want, especially the city manager.
Knows what the council wants.
Knows the core system tables and relationships.
Knows how to extract from those systems.
Knows how to put together management reports.

15. Envision the End Result (Dashboard) and Work It In Reverse
This data is wrong.
This data is too old to be meaningful.
This data needs to be consolidated.
This data needs to be broken down.
This data needs better labeling.
This data is too brief.
This data is too summarized.
This data is too detailed.
This data is not mine.
This data is incomplete.
This data should not be shown outside this department.
This data is pretty, but I still don’t know what it is telling me.
Who thought of this stupid BI idea?

16. Multi-Dimensional Cube

17. Municipal Court Revenue Dimensions Statutory Changes.
Police Department Leadership.
Police Officer Staffing and Efforts.
Weather Conditions.
Day of the Week.
Time of Day.
Geographical Considerations.
Municipal Court Staffing.
Municipal Court Judge Decisions.
Warrant Officer Staffing and Effectiveness.
Fine Rate Structure.
= Revenue
“The trend is your friend … until it bends at the end.”

18. Hold The (BI) Train!

19. ETL Components Extract from data sources. Look for missing data.
Look for duplicates.
Error corrections that did not get to history files.
Deal with abbreviations, periods, commas, spaces.
Standard spelling of names.
Standard IDs for employees, vendors, etc.
Pivot or unpivot data.
Index, sort.
Deal with historical changes in systems.
Deal with historical reorganizations.
Load into data warehouse.

20. BICC What is a Business Intelligence Competency Center
Is a cross-functional entity for organizations that embrace BI as a strategic need and require a greater return on their investments and continued success of their BI plans.
According to Gartner, the BICC consists of 4 main pillars:
User Training (communicating the technology through varying mediums)
Data Stewards (data ownership, data cleansing)
Meta Data (identifying the source and impact of changes to data)
Advanced Analysis (why it happened, what might happen, take BI to the next level)

21. The success of a BI initiative (and/or project) needs to be measured and compared against set objectives.
BI projects require repeatable processes, common terms, planning tools, templates, and best practices.
Measurements should be established to track and monitor the value of the BICC and its performance reported back to the stakeholders of the BI strategy.
The BICC needs to be a cost center generating value with its associates being part of project teams.
The stakeholders should set a utilization number for all members of the BICC team.

22. Most organizations think of BI in terms of constructing a data warehouse and deliver reporting.
But we know we need to support:
Traditional Ad-Hoc queries
Traditional operational reports
Online Analytical Programming (OLAP)
Scorecards/Dashboards
Data Mining
Forecasting and Planning
Statistical Analysis
Predictive Analytics
Business Rules Based Alerts
Knowledge Management

23. As a formal entity within the organization, the BICC is mandated to provide value in the following areas within the 4 main pillars:
Provide BI/DW expertise (all pillars).
Generate new BI/DW projects (advanced analysis).
Assure that all projects include a BI/DW component (meta data, advanced analysis).
Market the BI/DW role within the company (user training).
Be the advocates of BI/DW (user training, data stewards).
Ensure on-going analysis of existing solutions within the enterprise (all pillars).

24. The diagram below depicts the ideal roles and responsibilities associated with the BICC function (Source: SAS Institute).

25. Skills and Knowledge Project Management
Business Analysis (requirements, metric definition, measurement)
IT Delivery (report and scorecard design, ETL mapping)
Business Knowledge
BI and DW Technology & Architecture
Data Modeling (Schemas), Metadata
Bus Diagram
Analytical Experience
Education & Training
BI/DW mentorship & promotion

27. Roles, Resources, and Knowledge
Project Management.
Business Analysis (requirements, metric definition, measurement).
IT Delivery (report and scorecard design, ETL mapping).
Business Knowledge.
BI and DW Technology & Architecture.
Data Modeling (Star Schemas), Metadata.
Analytical Experience.
Education & Training.
BI/DW mentorship & promotion.

28. Delivery also includes post-project measurement.
The BICC must also be responsible for the adoption program and a put in place procedures to capture varying measurements related to project acceptance.
These can be automatic through auditing features and reports whereas other techniques may involve user canvassing.
Measurements must be captured and reported to the stakeholders.

29. A useful delivery method is a BICC scorecard capturing the following items:
Projects Success Factors (on time, on budget, level of engagement – hours and resources, PMO success factors).
Report Usage (usage, refreshes, speed of execution)
Data Usage (dormancy).
Application Usage (log-on counts).
Training program statistics (how many people trained)
Data Volumes (counts, daily loads).
Internal Seminars.
Knowledge Management Contributions (Wiki’s, Webcasts).

30. Industry Success Factors
Category
Project Assessment
Industry Success Factors
Business Benefit
Clear Value Understood
Clearly Understood by Business Sponsors, SME's, and IT
BI/DW Funding
Limited
Strong DW/BI investment in resources and toolset
Information Delivery
Currently Excel Based
Information available at all user-level communities
DW Delivery
Non-Existent
Complete BI/DW foundation regarding Best Practice Design, Implementation, Testing, and Deployment
BI/DW Adoption by User Community
Technology embraced and supported at all levels
Data Management
Stewardship or Process Non-Existent
Has clearly defined processes, procedures, and governance of data
Data Quality
Data for POC needs validation
Data is validated and reported through all aspects of the ETL Framework
SDLC
Good
Strict SDLC migration environments (Development, Test, QA, and Production)
Project Management
Excellent
Complete PM Methodology Adopted
Staffing Availability
Available resources
Availability of sponsors, SME's, Support, and Development staff are available and contributing
Staffing Expertise in DW Implementation and Methodology
Current resources will need extensive training
All BI/DW Roles are clearly defined, with highly-skilled staff assigned to project.

31. Project Charter
As with writing a project charter, the following areas must be defined for the BICC ;
Executive Summary – overview.
Mission – purpose of the BICC.
Vision - future expected state due to the existence of the BICC.
Stakeholders – reporting structure.
Mandate – governance of BI/DW projects, stewardship, metadata capture.
Deliverables – specific needs from projects to the BICC.
Approvals – sign-off authority on the deliverables, projects.
Appendices (if necessary) – additional information pertaining to the BICC (various artifacts).

32. Training A full training program should include;
A calendar of conferences and seminars.
A calendar of classes for technologies including SQL Server, Integration Services, Data Quality, Metadata tools, Data Modeling tools, Performance Point Server Monitor and Analytics.
A matrix of which users should attend which technology
List of books, magazines, and web sites that deliver BI/DW knowledge.
Library of white papers, books, webinars, webcasts.
List of local user groups, brown bag sessions, invited speakers.

34. Artifacts
The initial set of BICC artifacts must be created to include;
Checklist to identify whether a SOO contains a BI/DW component
Project template identifying tasks and general durations for those projects requiring an ETL and/or reporting need
Template and Wireframes for reports and sites
Metadata capture template
Data Stewardship template and a list of data owners
Requirements gathering template
Data Modeling guidelines including naming standards, techniques for star schema creation, existing conformed dimensions list, tools for modeling, etc
Reports & ETL testing scripts and guidelines
Various ancillary documents such as ETL data maps, glossaries, security needs, scorecard needs, etc

35. Data Governance and Compliance
The formal orchestration of people, processes and technology to enable an organization to leverage data as an enterprise asset.
Focused on managing the quality, consistency, usability, security, and availability of information.
Closely linked to the notions of data ownership and stewardship.
Data Owners – individuals that often belong to a business rather than technology division and are in a position to obtain, create and have significant control over the data
Data Stewards – individuals who ensure that adequate, agreed-upon quality metrics are maintained continuously and that there are data quality improvement programs within the organization.

36. Data Governance and Compliance
Regulations for compliance and intelligent data reporting
Sarbanes-Oxley Act, HIPAA, Patriot Act, Basel II, FDA CFR 11, Gramm-Leach-Biley Act.
Increased consequences for non-compliance .
Risk Management is a necessity.
Secure data.
Detecting problems in a tight timeframe with ability to respond quickly.
Timely delivery of information.
Garbage in = Garbage out is still true.
Expanding global markets.
Data is mobile.
Data has an external market value.
Demand for Single Version of Truth.

37. Data Governance and Compliance
Streamlined Processes.
Transparency and Visibility.
Integrated Systems.
Secure Data.
Lower Cost of Ownership.
Efficient and Effective Use of Resources.

38. *Per the Data Governance Institute
Data Governance Principles
Integrity - Data Governance participants will practice integrity with their dealings with each other; they will be truthful and forthcoming when discussing drivers, constraints, options, and impacts for data-related decisions.
Transparency - Data Governance and Stewardship processes will exhibit transparency; it should be clear to all participants and auditors how and when data-related decisions and controls were introduced into the processes.
Audit-ability - Data-related decisions, processes, and controls subject to Data Governance will be auditable; they will be accompanied by documentation to support compliance-based and operational auditing requirements.
Accountability - Data Governance will define accountabilities for cross-functional data-related decisions, processes, and controls.
Stewardship - Data Governance will define accountabilities for stewardship activities that are the responsibilities of individual contributors, as well as accountabilities for groups of Data Stewards
Checks-and-Balances - Data Governance will define accountabilities in a manner that introduces checks-and-balances between business and technology teams as well as between those who create/collect information, those who manage it, those who use it, and those who introduce standards and compliance requirements.
Standardization - Data Governance will introduce and support standardization of enterprise data.
Change Management - Data Governance will support proactive and reactive Change Management activities for reference data values and the structure/use of master data and metadata
*Per the Data Governance Institute

39. Data Governance Strategies
Design and refine “future state” business processes with both IT and business leadership collaborating on it
Determine value of data and calculate probability for risk associated
What is it worth; Where is it; How is it used; Where and when to integrate it and federate it
Risk will determine how much should be spent on controls and protection
Define a data governance process
Initial data load
Data refinement
Standardization
Aggregation
Elimination of duplicate records
Creation of linking and matching keys
Design, select and implement a data management and data delivery technology suite
Defining your Data Architecture
Role of SOA and integration
Measuring and selecting data cleansing, auditing, etc. tools

40. Data Governance Strategies
Enable audit-ability and accountability for all data under management that is in scope for data governance strategy
Provides verifiable records of the data access activities
Serves as an invaluable tool to help achieve compliance with current and emerging regulations
Creation and empowerment of roles…assign data owners and data stewards
Don’t underestimate efforts needed for data quality
Data preparation, validation, extraction, transformation and loading…could take as much as 75% of the data warehouse development effort
Over 50% of these activities could be spent on cleansing and standardizing the data
Need complete and clear semantic definitions of what the data is supposed to represent, in what form and with what kind of timeliness requirements…typically stored in a metadata repository
Data quality tools and technologies
Assess level of maturity for data governance categories and then build plan and vision for moving to higher levels.

41. Data Governance Strategies

42. Data Governance Goals Enable better decision-making
Reduce operational friction
Protect the needs of data stakeholders
Train management and staff to adopt common approaches to data issues
Build standard, repeatable processes
Reduce costs and increase effectiveness through coordination of efforts
Ensure transparency of processes

43. Data Methodologies Master Data Management (MDM)
The authoritative, reliable foundation for data used across many applications
and constituencies with the goal to provide a single view of the truth no matter
where it lies.
Customer Data Integration (CDI)
Processes and technologies for recognizing a customer and its relationships at
any touch-point while aggregating, managing and harmonizing accurate, up-to-
date knowledge about that customer to deliver it ‘just in time’ in an actionable
form to touch-points.
Master Data Integration (MDI)
Process for harmonizing core business information across heterogeneous
sources, augmenting the system of record with rich content by cleansing,
standardizing and matching information to provide high data quality in support
of a master data management initiative

44. Steering Committee
The Steering Committee must assume and/or delegate the following responsibilities:
Formation and Continuance
Develop, maintain and follow a formal group charter and bylaws
Identify Data and Application Integration Opportunities
Review whatever existing BI components are to ensure that they continue to be optimal. This will include the monitoring and analysis of activity so that bottlenecks are eliminated or reduced and opportunities for enhancement can be identified and acted upon
Listen to the “voice of the user” by receiving and processing change requests from those affected by implemented BI solutions
Receive and process change requests from external users, such as partners, customers, etc.

45. Steering Committee Define Business Intelligence Opportunities
Understand opportunity-specific dependencies, timing, alternatives and risks
Define organizational/operational costs and impacts
Combine opportunities where appropriate
Detail the impact of external dependencies
Define solution alternatives and estimate implementation costs for each
Ensure that each solution alternative complies with BICC principles and designs
Create cost/benefit scenario(s)
Prioritize Opportunities
Alignment with strategies
Business priority
Technical priority
Economic benefit
Risks and alternatives
Decide which opportunities are justified to be executed as projects

46. Steering Committee (Roles)
Responsibilities
Chairperson
Approves, declines or postpones Projects presented by the Steering Committee
BICC Manager
Chairs Steering Committee meetings and is responsible for presenting Projects to the Chairperson; oversees BICC projects and that their costs are contained and benefits realized
Communications
Facilitates communication with the various stakeholders and functions as the Steering Committee’s secretary
LOB Representatives
Represents the general business interests of their respective business segment or function
Information Technology
Represents the general IT interests of their respective IT groups
Architecture SME
Ensures that solutions proposed are consistent with the overall architecture and spirit of the BICC initiative
Infrastructure SME
Ensures that infrastructure of the solutions proposed can be efficiently supported

47. Steering Committee Data Steward (DS) responsibilities include:
Definition and sourcing of the data elements to which they are assigned
Establishing data management quality criteria and routines
Mitigating quality out-of-bound conditions
Population and maintenance of their respective metadata
Quality assurance checklist includes:
Attribute data types are appropriate to their contents; e.g. numeric attributes are stored in numeric, not character, fields
Attribute values are all within valid ranges
Capitalization, abbreviation, etc, of text attributes (e.g. place names) are consistent throughout the dataset
Temporary attributes used only in construction of the dataset have been removed
Features all have 'reasonable' locations (e.g. all soil samples occur on land)
All feature or cell/pixel attributes contain values (or documentation explains why some values are null, zero or blank)

48. Metadata Management
Metadata, or “data about data,” allows organizations to create a map of their data terrain.
Organizations can leverage this map on an enterprise or a project level to understand, manage, and integrate data more effectively.
Metadata describes how information assets and processes are derived, the fundamental relationships between them, and how they are used.
It is the linkage between technical and business metadata, and tracks all the dependencies within the enterprise, holding the definition of where and how data is used, what happens when it is moved, and what it becomes in the source environment.
It has been estimated that 66% of data warehousing efforts fail and the leading cause is improper metadata management. No wonder Ralph Kimball, considered one of the fathers of data warehousing writes “Metadata isn’t important – It’s everything!”

49. Examples of Metadata Technical Metadata
User report and query access patterns, frequency and execution time
The system of record feeding the database(s)
Mappings and transformation from the system of record to the database(s)
The data model, both physical and logical
Database table names, keys and indexes
Database table structures and table attribution
Job dependencies
Program names and descriptions
Security

50. Examples of Metadata Business Metadata
Data structures as known to the business user (friendly names and descriptions).
Table names and their business definitions.
Attribute names and their business definitions.
Field mappings, transformations and summarizations.
Database refresh dates.
Tagging Names used for search.
Taxonomy.

51. Examples of Metadata Informal Metadata Data Stewardship.
Business Rules.
Business Definitions.
Transformations and Summarizations.

52. Examples of Metadata
A metadata repository catalogs the information defined above, which can then be utilized to identify redundancies and to eliminate duplication that already exists.
Improves data quality by providing a full understanding of the data.
Structured metadata provides visibility by various users, be they business, technical or even systems and applications, into subjects such as structures, relationships, business and data quality rules and performance.

53. Examples of Metadata
Metadata provides business benefits in the areas of both cost reduction and revenue enhancement:
Lowers development costs.
Drastically reduces redundant data.
Drastically reduces redundant data processing.
Lowers impact of staff turnover.
Increases business user productivity.
Speeds time-to-market by reducing cycle times.
Aids in the support of quality decision-making.

54. Processes Data Lineage:
Used as audit trails for governance- and compliance-related tasks or as a contextual baseline to verify the status of IT implementations. Provides capability to record and trace the movement of data and data relationships. It shows changes in metadata including schema, table, index, and other definitions and context.
The data lineage include following activates:
Setting up interface to audit the metadata to
Track Usage – Who is Using, What is Used.
Track or trace movement of data.
Track and indentify performance problems.
Track data definition, frequency of updates and relationship
Setting up predefined Reports on metadata.
Setting up interface to run ad-hoc queries against metadata repository.

55. Data Stewardship Roles
The Data Stewardship helps in oversight on business conditions derived from unified data analysis. It starts with the standardization of business vocabularies and data dictionaries across data sources. Data stewardship then enables the most relevant abstraction to be presented to various users—from developers to IT management, from auditors to executives.
The data stewardship include following activates:
Setting up reports for Data Analysis to
Discover Under Utilized Objects.
Discover miss-use of Data Definition.
Discover violation of business rules defined.
Setting up data governance practice to
Proactively respond business challenges.
Exploit new opportunities and mitigate potential risks.
Enable automated review and analysis of data landscape.

56. Project Management

57. Define the Project Initiate Project
During the project planning phase of projects that will span a significant length of time or involve many people, it is important to define the objectives, assumptions, and constraints of the project.
Start the Project Plan
After the initial planning, you can create your project file, enter your preliminary project data, and attach your planning documents to the file.
Define Project Deliverables
After you establish the objectives of your project, you define the actual product or service that meets those objectives.

58. Plan Project Activities
Define Phases and Tasks
After you determine the work involved in your project, you can organize it into milestones, phases, and tasks and enter it into a project plan.
Show Projects Organization
After you outline tasks, you can also show the structure of your project by using built-in or customized work breakdown structure (WBS) codes or outline codes.
Estimate Task Duration
Calculate a realistic schedule for you, often based solely on task durations and task dependencies that you enter.
Schedule Project Tasks
After you enter the task durations, it's time to address how those tasks are related to each other and tied to specific dates.
Create Relationships between projects
By creating task dependencies between the tasks in different projects, you can evaluate the effects of changes and activities in one project on other projects.

59. Plan for and Procure Resources
Estimate Resource Needs
After you determine the work involved in your project, you can organize it into milestones, phases, and tasks and enter it into a project plan.
Build the Project Team
All of your resources were identified, approved, and procured. Now you can build your team by entering the resource information into the project plan.
Assign Resources to Tasks
Now that the resource information has been entered into the project, you can assign resources to the specific tasks you set up as the work of the project.
Other Project Assignments.
Make sure to assign resources to multiple projects.

60. Plan Project Costs Estimate Costs
Cost estimating is the process of developing the approximate resource and task costs needed to complete the project
Define Cost and Budget Baseline
After you enter cost rates, you can save them as your budget before you start tracking and managing the plan. Also, you may want to attach important notes about budget decisions, share the budget information with others, or transfer information to other file formats.
Prepare Manage Costs
After establishing costs, you can make the necessary preparations for tracking and managing them to ensure that the project stays within budget. You can specify a start date for the fiscal year, control the calculation options, and determine when the costs are payable.

61. Quality and Risk Plan for Quality
Before a project begins, identify the quality standards that are necessary to achieve project objectives.
Plan for Risk
Identifying, planning for, and reducing risk at various times during a project can help you to keep the project on schedule and within budget.
Prepare Manage Costs
After establishing costs, you can make the necessary preparations for tracking and managing them to ensure that the project stays within budget. You can specify a start date for the fiscal year, control the calculation options, and determine when the costs are payable.

62. Communication Setup methods for communication project plan
Set up a method for communicating with the project team and keeping the project up-to-date.
Create Rosters
Create a list of resources and contact information with regards to the project. Add roles and responsibilities.
Plan for Issue Escalation
Define the issue escalation and resolution process.

63. Optimize the Plan Optimize the Project Plan
After building your project plan, you can review and fine-tune it to ensure that you meet the scheduled finish date.
Optimize Resources
After building your project plan, review the allocation of your resources to optimize their workloads. Schedule Meetings at the right time to allow for productivity.
Optimize Plan for Budget
Review the planned costs in your completed project plan to ensure that they stay within your budget.

64. Optimize the Plan Manage Costs
You manage costs by keeping costs within your budget. Costs are all of the resources required to carry out a project, including the people and equipment that do the work and the materials consumed as the work is completed.
Monitor Costs
By reviewing the basic cost information for your project on a repeating basis, as well as performing a more detailed analysis of cost information, you can help to ensure that your project's financial success.
Manage Resources
Manage your resources by tracking their progress, identifying and resolving allocation problems, managing shared resources, and reporting the project progress to stakeholders and team members.
Track Progress
The most effective way to gauge the progress of resources' work on a project is to balance their workloads and track the progress on tasks.
Identify Resource Allocation Problems
By reviewing the resource information, such as assignments, over-allocations or under-allocations, resource costs, and variances between planned and actual work, you can verify that the resources are optimally assigned to tasks to get the results that you want.

65. Optimize the Plan Resolve Resource Issues
To get the best performance and results from resources, you need to manage their workloads to fix over-allocations and under-allocations.
Manage Information About Shared Resources
After you add enterprise resources, review or change shared resource information to make sure that your project is as flexible and cost effective as possible.
Manage Schedule
Manage your project by identifying problems, fine-tuning the schedule, and reporting its progress to stakeholders and team members.
Identify Schedule Problems
As you track the actual progress of tasks, you can review your schedule to identify problems or potential problems with task schedules.
Put Tasks on Back of Schedule
If you identify problems in your schedule, you can use a variety of strategies to manage your project schedule.

66. Requirements (Brainstorming)
Requirements gathering techniques provide the project team members with a choice of methods for eliciting needs or requirements from stakeholders and for validating requirements with stakeholders.
Certain techniques are appropriate in gathering stakeholder needs, while other techniques are most helpful in defining high-level and detailed requirements, or validating detailed requirements with the stakeholders
Common Approaches
Interview (Q&A).
Brainstorming (Mindmaps).
Joint Application Development (JAD) Sessions.
Survey and Questionnaire.
Brownbag Sessions (sticky notes).
Storyboarding and Prototype (worth weight in gold).
Proof of Concept.
Use Cases.
Use a combination approach.

67. Plans at NCTCOG
NCTCOG is not just talking about BI, we are making it happen.
Plans are being assembled to teach BI principles and tools to every level of management in the organization beginning in May 2012.
We are anticipating that we will offer a fee-based BI training series to the region by Fall Will evolve over three years.
Group/Level
Management
(City Managers, Assistant City Managers, Analysts, Other Support Staff
Subject Matter Experts
(Fiscal, Public Works, Public Safety, Parks & Recreation)
Information Technology & Analytical Tools (SQL Server, IBM Cognos, QlikView, Others)
Orientation/ Roundtable X
Basic
Intermediate
X (selective)
Advanced