The Microsoft® Data Warehouse Toolkit: With SQL Server™ 2005 and the Microsoft® Business Intelligence Toolset

1.2. Uncovering Business Value

If you're going to be driven by business value, you need to go out and identify, understand, and prioritize the needs of the business. This is easier said than done if your focus has historically been on technology. Fortunately, the Business Dimensional Lifecycle provides the tools to work through an entire development iteration of a data warehouse, beginning with business requirements.

Where do you start with your business intelligence system? What is the first step? The consultant in us immediately blurts out the standard consulting answer: "It depends." In fact, it does depend on a host of factors, such as how your organization works, what you already know about the business, who is involved in the project at this point, what kinds of DW/BI efforts came before, and many other factors. Let's talk about the most common scenario first, and then we'll address a few exceptions.

More often than not, the DW/BI system starts as a project hosted by the Information Technology (IT) organization. There is generally some level of business interest; in fact, the business folks may be the source of inspiration. But they are pushing for information in a form they can use, not specifically for a DW/BI system (unless, of course, they had access to a well-built data warehouse in their last job and they really miss it).

Most often, the IT-driven DW/BI project gets started because the CIO decides the company needs a data warehouse, so people and resources are assigned ...