BI Project Team Structure

Every BI project team must have a complementary skill set to perform the necessary activities for the three development tracks. Although each track will have its own subproject team members , from the overall BI project management perspective the BI project team structure contains only two types of teams :

1. The core team

2. The extended team

The Core Team

The core team can be thought of as a SWAT team. A project SWAT team is a self-organizing team ”the members redistribute the workload among themselves , peer-review each other's task deliverables, make decisions together, brainstorm together, and co-lead the project. The core team has permanent project core team members and permanent step core team members.

• Permanent project core team members must be available 100 percent of their time from beginning to end of the BI project to perform project activities applicable to the roles assigned to them. More importantly, they must co-lead the project. The optimum size for this team is four or five people, never exceeding seven people. This team should be staffed with:

  - One project manager (not an administrator)

  - One representative from the business side

  - One business analyst from the information technology (IT) department (either a data administrator or a business liaison)

  - One technical person from the IT department (either a senior systems analyst or a senior programmer)

  

  The business person's full-time availability is a critical success factor for all BI projects. If the business executives resist releasing one business person full-time , it indicates that they neither view nor support the BI project as a critical cross-organizational strategic business initiative.

• Permanent step core team members must be available 100 percent of their time from beginning to end of those development steps that require their full-time involvement. For example, the ETL lead developer must be fully dedicated to lead the activities of the ETL track.

All core team members brainstorm together, assign work to each other, review each other's deliverables, resolve issues, and make project- related decisions together.

Each person on the core team can and probably will be assigned multiple roles, regardless of whether they are permanent project core team members or permanent step core team members.

Table 0.3 lists the core team roles (in alphabetical order) and their major responsibilities.

The business representative role on the core team is usually assigned to the primary business person representing the business community for whom the BI application is being developed. He or she participates on the project as a full-time member of the project core team. If necessary or desired, this role can be assigned to more than one business person, with the stipulation that every business person will dedicate 100 percent of his or her time to the BI project.

Table 0.3. Core Team Roles and Responsibilities

Role	Major Responsibilities
Application lead developer	Designing and overseeing the development of the access and analysis application (e.g., reports , queries)
BI infrastructure architect	Establishing and maintaining the BI technical infrastructure (in some organizations, overseeing the nontechnical infrastructure as well); usually reports to the strategic architect on the extended team
Business representative	Participating in modeling sessions, providing data definitions, writing test cases, making business decisions, resolving disputes between business units, and improving the data quality under the control of the business unit represented by this role
Data administrator	Performing cross-organizational data analysis, creating the project-specific logical data models, and merging the logical data models into an enterprise logical data model
Data mining expert	Choosing and running the data mining tool; must have a statistical background
Data quality analyst	Assessing source data quality and preparing data-cleansing specifications for the ETL process
Database administrator	Designing, loading, monitoring, and tuning the BI target databases
ETL lead developer	Designing and overseeing the ETL process
Meta data administrator	Building or licensing (buying), enhancing, loading, and maintaining the meta data repository
Project manager	Defining, planning, coordinating, controlling, and reviewing all project activities; tracking and reporting progress; resolving technical and business issues; mentoring the team; negotiating with vendors , the business representative, and the business sponsor; has overall responsibility for the project
Subject matter expert	Providing business knowledge about data, processes, and requirements

Some roles can be combined and some are mutually exclusive. For example, one person can perform one of the following combinations of roles:

• Application lead developer and ETL lead developer ( assuming the person has the different skill sets required for both)

• Data administrator, data quality analyst, and meta data administrator (assuming the person has the required technical skills)

• Data quality analyst, subject matter expert, and business representative

Mutually exclusive roles, which should never be assigned to the same person, are listed below.

• Data administrator and database administrator: The data administrator produces process- independent logical data models, while the database administrator produces process- dependent physical data models (logical database designs). It would be difficult for one person to perform these bipolar activities on the same project, even if the person had the skills to do both.

• Project manager and any nonlead role: Managing a BI decision-support project is a full-time job and cannot be put in second position to any development work. One person will simply not have time to both manage the project and do the work.

The Extended Team

The extended team members also have responsibilities on the BI project, but for these members the BI project is not their main priority during the entire project schedule. These members have to schedule time to work with the full-time core team members. They can also be called into sessions when their expertise is needed to resolve a problem or to help make a decision.

Each member on the extended team can be assigned one or multiple roles and is responsible for the activities performed under each assigned role. Table 0.4 lists the extended team roles (in alphabetical order) and their major responsibilities.

As on the core team, some roles on the extended team can be combined and some are mutually exclusive. For example, one person can perform one of the following combinations of roles:

• Application developer, ETL developer, and meta data repository developer (assuming the person has the different skill sets required for the three development tracks)

• Web developer and Web master

Table 0.4. Extended Team Roles and Responsibilities

Role	Major Responsibilities
Application developer(s)	Coding the report programs, writing query scripts, and developing the access and analysis applications
BI support (help desk staff)	Mentoring and training the business staff
Business sponsor	Championing the BI initiative and removing business-related roadblocks for the BI project team
ETL developer(s)	Coding the ETL programs and/or preparing the instructions for the ETL tool
IT auditor or QA analyst	Determining the risks and exposures of the BI project due to internal lack of controls or external forces
Meta data repository developer(s)	Coding the meta data repository migration programs to load the meta data repository database; providing meta data reports and an online help function
Network services staff	Maintaining the network environment
Operations staff	Running the batch processes for the ETL cycles, the access and analysis application, and the meta data repository
Security officer	Ensuring that security requirements are defined and that security features are tested across all tools and databases
Stakeholders (other business representatives or IT managers)	Handling limited responsibilities on the BI project, such as reviewing and ratifying the cross-organizational standards and business rules the BI project team uses or develops
Strategic architect	Managing the overall technical infrastructure for the organization, including the BI technical infrastructure
Technical services staff	Maintaining the hardware infrastructure and the operating systems
Testers	Testing programming code created by the developers from the ETL, Application, and Meta Data Repository tracks
Tool administrators	Installing and maintaining the developer tools and the access and analysis tools
Web developer(s)	Designing the Web site and creating the Web pages for displaying reports and queries on the intranet, extranet, or Internet
Web master	Setting up the Web server and Web security

Mutually exclusive roles, which should never be assigned to the same person, are:

• Developer (of any type) and tester: A developer testing his or her own programs is like the fox guarding the henhouse. Even if the developer were motivated to break his or her own code, it is unlikely that he or she would think of all the possible test cases and carry out an objective test plan. However, a developer can take on the role of a tester for another developer's programs, as done in peer reviews and integration testing.

Additional Limited Roles

Other roles participate on the BI project on a limited, as-needed basis.

• Data owners are the major stakeholders in any BI initiative. They are responsible for the quality of business data under their ownership and for validating the business meta data.

• The facilitator is a third-party participant during post-implementation reviews. His or her responsibility is to lead the review meetings.

• The scribe is also a third-party participant during post-implementation reviews. He or she is responsible for taking notes and documenting the meeting minutes and the resulting action items.

The BI Arbitration Board

The discussion on roles and responsibilities cannot end without mention of the BI arbitration board. On cross-organizational BI projects, technical as well as business disputes will arise that neither the core team nor the extended team will be able to resolve. A dispute resolution procedure should be established with guidelines for handling these types of disputes. If a resolution cannot be achieved through other prescribed means, the project team must have access to a body of executives with the authority to be the tiebreaker. This body of executives is the BI arbitration board, sometimes known as the BI steering committee.

BI arbitration boards can be organized in a variety of ways. A BI arbitration board can be a newly created group whose members include the business sponsor, the chief technology/information officer (CTO/CIO), IT managers, the chief operating officer (COO), the chief financial officer (CFO), and line-of-business managers. In some smaller organizations, even the chief executive officer (CEO) could be a member of this board.

In other organizations, the BI arbitration board can be an existing committee. Most organizations already have some official or unofficial executive committee. For example, the CTO/CIO typically meets monthly with the employees who report directly to him or her, and the CEO typically meets monthly with line-of-business executives, the CFO, and the COO. If a separate BI arbitration board cannot be established, then the BI project teams must have access to the existing executive committees .