by Angela Guess
Mark Bradbourne of SmartDataCollective discussed his strategy for assembling a dream BI team. He writes, “If you had to build your BI Dream Team, who would be the players? Your first instinct might be to go the ultra-experienced route, filling the team with seasoned veterans bringing their wealth of knowledge to the company and letting them drive to the BI Promised Land… I was marching down this path, within a budget or course, until I had a conversation with Dallas Marksover lunch a couple of months ago. He talked about building a BI team and compared it to making beef stew. I scratched my head and pondered this parable… and it started to make sense.”
He continues, “While a good BI Team does have a sprinkling of veterans, there is a need for mid-level team members as well as ‘newbies.’ When you make beef stew, you don’t fill a pot with 4 pounds of filet minion, you’ve got to have celery, potatoes and onions as well as a good beef stock and some seasonings to get a quality beef stew. The first piece that needs to be in place is the Business Intelligence Architect. This person oversees all aspects of the solution from the requirements gathering to the training, and preferably they have experience in many, if not all, of these areas so they can act as a mentor to the entry-level and mid-level employees. The BI Architect needs a few implementations under their belts so they can react to and anticipate curves in the road as the project goes along.”
