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Careful consideration must be taken when identifying the audience and goal of the business intelligence solution. These are key factors in most development projects, not just business intelligence projects. Although the audience often dictates the goals, it is important to realize that in comparison they are both equally important. More specifically you consider:

● What are the data requirements?

● Is there a need for a data warehouse or a semantic model?

● What are the hardware needs?

Without adequate knowledge, these questions could result in the development of a solution that does not meet the needs or goals of an organization. Even worse, they may create a solution that meets the requirements, but cannot physically support an organization because of poorly sized hardware.

Who's the Audience?

Identifying the audience should be the starting point, because if you do not have an intended group of end-users, what is the purpose of the project in the first place? Most successful projects succeed because they have some type of buy-in or sponsorship from a larger group that is not part of the development team. For example, a common business intelligence project involves determining past, current, and future sales for a given company. The request for this may come from the CEO, Finance or Marketing department, or from a branch office. Either way, now that the project is aligned with a specific group or groups, obtaining resources to produce the solution becomes much easier, which is an advantage that any development project can benefit from. These resources, include, but are not limited to software, hardware, and people.

The newfound partnership comes with a list of items that may or may not positively assist the project. One item is goals, discussed in the next section. Another, and probably more important, is deadlines. End users often measure the success of a project based on hands-on interactivity. If end users have nothing to see, touch, and use on a given date, the project can easily lose the trust and support that existed at the inception of the project. You could categorize this as a positive aspect of the partnership in regards to success. Deadlines should ensure the on-time delivery of the solution. However, the developers working on the project may see this as negative because it could inhibit or minimize what can and will be delivered due to time constraints.

Another item that is often a result of this partnership is the amount of partner involvement (or the lack thereof). Because a large part of a business intelligence project is discovery, partners must spend time discovering data sources, data needs, goals, how to visualize, which tools to use to visualize, and so on. This requires the involvement of certain people, who are often already inundated with their existing jobs. Because their time is already at a premium, finding additional time to devote to the new project is difficult. Although developers are often well versed in and have intimate understanding of the data to use, they often lack the knowledge of how to massage the data to meet the project's requirements. Without that knowledge, the business intelligence project is destined to fail before it begins.

What Is the Goal(s)?

Now that you've identified your project's end users, it's time to take their knowledge and convert it into goals and requirements. These goals and requirements typically equate to the scope of the project, which further assists in defining timelines, selecting tools, identifying data needs, and selecting hardware. Within the scope, you outline certain goals, such as what should be developed, how it should look, who or what should have access to it, and what to use as the delivery mechanism. Although not an exhaustive list of outlined goal types, they should assist you in quantifying and identifying a project's goals.