(Do refer Business Requirements phase in data Warehouse)
Identify the interview resources
Identification of interview resources needs to be done on the following lines:
- Their knowledge of Domain
- Their relationship with the interview
- Their skills for the interviewing
From my perspective, the last factor is most important. You will need to train the interviewers with the interviewing skills.
Do the home-work for interviews
One of the key differences between an OLTP transaction system and Data Warehouse is that OLTP is more (though not entirely) on build something new. The Data Warehouse projects are to maximize the benefit of the information that you have. Therefore, you can add a lot of value by doing home-work, before you go for interviews. On a broad note, the total time spent in homework and interviewing should be 50-50. The home work can include:
- Existing reports and MIS packs used
- The business plans of the function or the enterprise
- Published business priorities
- The IT and IS landscape
Conduct User Kick-Off & Prepare Interviewees
You call the key respondents in a room, and share the context, objectives and plans related to the data warehouse and Business intelligence initiatives. You can answer any questions or clarifications.
TIP- One question which is generally asked by the business interviewees is on if they can change the business requirements at later stage and if the data warehouse will be flexible to handle a change in the business requirements. The answer to this question should be cautious. You should not say flat 'no' (as this is not the case). You should share the concept of dimensional modeling and the level of flexibility that you can have.
Conduct Business User Interviews
Business interview process is explained in the Business requirements gathering.
Conduct IS Data Discovery Interviews
This is explained in the IS-IT assessment
Assess business requirements
This is explained in the business requirements findings assessment
Publish Business Requirements document
TIP- Before you formally publish the business requirement document, any significant changes (from the project definition phase) need to be confirmed by the sponsors or business owners. This will include cost, effort and time impact. Therefore the big ticket changes would have been known to the audience before the BR document is published. Refer business requirements document.
Prioritize and Revise Project Scope
This is the stage at which you would have second level of details on the business requirements (the first level was the business theme one pager). You can look at the changes in the requirements (a new business theme might have emerged or an old one may not be needed), or the size of requirements (the level of detail and the complexity of information needs could be different from what you gathered in the project definition phase)
You have confirmed at this stage on what business actually wants (refer business requirements document), and requirements have been signed-off by business. Now its time to:
- Re-estimate as per the business requirements.
- Re-prioritize the business requirements.
- Re-sequence the same requirements, but in different sequence or phases...
As mentioned before, some part of this re-prioritization and re-estimation is done before business requirements are formalized.
Sponsor and user sign-off on the Data Warehouse Initiation Phase completion Report
This is the report, which comes with final set of numbers, scope and plans on DW after the business requirements phase. This is the formal document, which sets the stage for the rest of the project.
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