Agile Analytics

Foreword by Jim Highsmith xv Foreword by Wayne Eckerson xvii Preface xix Acknowledgments xxxiii About the Author xxxv Part I: Agile Analytics: Management Methods 1 Chapter 1: Introducing Agile Analytics 3 Alpine-Style Systems Development 4 What Is Agile Analytics? 7 Data Warehousing Architectures and Skill Sets 13 Why Do We Need Agile Analytics? 16 Introducing FlixBuster Analytics 22 Wrap-Up 23 Chapter 2: Agile Project Management 25 What Is Agile Project Management? 26 Phased-Sequential DW/BI Development 30 Envision --> Explore Instead of Plan --> Do 32 Changing the Role of Project Management 35 Making Sense of Agile "Flavors" 36 Tenets of Agility 39 Wrap-Up 56 Chapter 3: Community, Customers, and Collaboration 59 What Are Agile Community and Collaboration? 60 The Agile Community 64 A Continuum of Trust 67 The Mechanics of Collaboration 69 Consumer Collaboration 73 Doer Collaboration 77 Planner Collaboration 78 Precursors to Agility 80 Wrap-Up 82 Chapter 4: User Stories for BI Systems 85 What Are User Stories? 86 User Stories versus Requirements 89 From Roles to Use Cases to User Stories 92 Decomposing Epics 99 What's the Smallest, Simplest Thing? 103 Story Prioritization and Backlog Management 107 Story-Point Estimating 111 Parking Lot Diagrams 117 Wrap-Up 119 Chapter 5: Self-Organizing Teams Boost Performance 121 What Is a Self-Organizing Team? 122 Self-Organization Requires Self-Discipline 127 Self-Organization Requires Shared Responsibility 128 Self-Organization Requires Team Working Agreements 130 Self-Organization Requires Honoring Commitments 132 Self-Organization Requires Glass-House Development 134 Self-Organizing Requires Corporate Alignment 136 Wrap-Up 137 Part II: Agile Analytics: Technical Methods 139 Chapter 6: Evolving Excellent Design 141 What Is Evolutionary Design? 144 How Much Up-Front Design? 148 Agile Modeling 149 Data Model Patterns 152 Managing Technical Debt 154 Refactoring 157 What Is Refactoring? 159 Deploying Warehouse Changes 167

Ken Collier has worked with Agile methods since 2003, and pioneered the integration of Agile methods with data warehousing, business intelligence, and analytics to create the Agile Analytics style. He continues to refine these ideas as technical lead and project manager on several Agile DW/BI project teams. Collier frequently trains DW/BI teams in Agile Analytics, and has been a keynote speaker on the subject at HEDW (Higher Education Data Warehouse) 2011 and multiple TDWI (The Data Warehousing Institute) World Conferences. He is founder and president of KWC Technologies, Inc., and a senior consultant in the Cutter Consortium's Agile Development and Business Intelligence practice areas.

"This book does a great job of explaining why and how you would implement Agile Analytics in the real world. Ken has many lessons learned from actually implementing and refining this approach. Business Intelligence is definitely an area that can benefit from this type of discipline." -Dale Zinkgraf, Sr. Business Intelligence Architect "One remarkable aspect of Agile Analytics is the breadth of coverage-from product and backlog management to Agile project management techniques, from self-organizing teams to evolutionary design practices, from automated testing to build management and continuous integration. Even if you are not on an analytics project, Ken's treatment of this broad range of topics related to products with a substantial data-oriented flavor will be useful for and beyond the analytics community." -Jim Highsmith, Executive Consultant, ThoughtWorks, Inc., and author of Agile Project Management "Agile methods have transformed software development, and now it's time to transform the analytics space. Agile Analytics provides the knowledge needed to make the transformation to Agile methods in delivering your next analytics projects." -Pramod Sadalage, coauthor of Refactoring Databases: Evolutionary Database Design "This book captures the fundamental strategies for successful business intelligence/analytics projects for the coming decade. Ken Collier has raised the bar for analytics practitioners-are you up to the challenge?" -Scott Ambler, Chief Methodologist for Agile and Lean, IBM Rational Founder, Agile Data Method "A sweeping presentation of the fundamentals that will empower teams to deliver high-quality, high-value, working business intelligence systems far more quickly and cost effectively than traditional software development methods." -Ralph Hughes, author of Agile Data Warehousing