“The philosophy of the data warehouse is that it should support any analysis against any data for any business purpose at any time.”

Learning curve

Do you know how much you don't know?

Stephen Poole

TO BECOME AN EXPERT IN ANYTHING COMPLEX, you have to accept that there’s far more to know than you already do. In fact, the people at the top of their game are often the most humble because they understand how much they have left to learn.

Similarly, the best books on complicated concepts and procedures understand that, while you can learn from the experiences of others, ultimately you have to shape that advice to your current situation and changing needs. Let’s face it: Learning is an open-ended process that requires frequent adjustments.

Two new data management books provide detailed explanations based on years of experience, yet they have a healthy respect for flexibility. The first book explains how understanding your business drives actions, and how measuring those actions leads to more understanding and more actions, and so on. The second book is a roadmap for developing effective business intelligence. The step-by-step methodology is rigorous, but not rigid.

Like Johann Sebastian Bach, who freely embellished his musical compositions while performing, the authors encourage you to adapt their models, even while you’re implementing them.

Evolutionary spiral
Consider a conch shell. Its circular growth extends both upward and outward. Companies that understand their business and act on that understanding can undergo a similar growth pattern as their business knowledge feeds action feeds knowledge.

Evolving Through Action (Armstrong; $20), by Rob Armstrong and Dan Higgins, plots the evolutionary path of the data warehouse as corporations use technology to drive business value. According to the authors, “The philosophy of the data warehouse is that it should support any analysis against any data for any business purpose at any time.” That’s a tall order, but it’s an essential strategy that can provide the flexibility you’ll need as you face an uncertain future.

“If you start to focus in on customers at the expense of all else,” the authors explain, “then you will eventually end up with a system that will not support the inclusion of non-customer specific processes.” Many companies assume they can get most of what they need from their current systems. The problem, according to Armstrong and Higgins, is that companies often don’t know what their data users “need to do in the next few months, let alone the coming years.” The authors use the analogy of a small child whose whole world is the backyard. As a teenager, that world expands to the school, city and surrounding area. The world expands further still when the adult begins to travel. Soon the person realizes that the backyard is only the beginning. “The more you know, the more you realize you don’t know,” the authors conclude.

Along with the expected success stories, you’ll find examples of how companies can lose sight of their goals. The book describes a European company whose management team boasted that its data warehouse queries didn’t run longer than five seconds. The company cited this as evidence of a successful data warehouse. It turned out that all queries over five seconds were disallowed or cancelled. The system looked good on paper, yet it wasn’t flexible enough to handle a full range of questions. Speed is important, but not as important as results.

The authors argue that businesses need the ability to answer unanticipated business questions quickly, or—to put it another way—to fail fast. “By ‘fail fast’ we mean the need to fire off a number of possibly important business questions where the potential value will not be fully understood until the answer is returned,” they write.

“In many cases the answers to these queries will be discarded but they may lead to additional queries where the answers have a significant impact.”

Evolving Through Action offers an easy-to-follow format for data warehouse success. Unusually clear and concise, it’s suitable for novices and experts alike.

Flexible education
Just as useful, though far from concise, our second book is a comprehensive guide to developing an effective business intelligence (BI) decision-support application. Business Intelligence Roadmap (Addison-Wesley; $49.99), by Larissa T. Moss and Shaku Atre, is a discussion of the business models, prototype structures, project requirement definitions, corporate roles and relevant issues involved in creating and maintaining an integrated BI environment. It’s hard to imagine a more complete view of the topic.

The authors provide a step-by-step analysis in three

complementary formats: a 375-page section that meticulously describes the stages in the process; a 144-page section with supporting lists, graphs, charts, activities and tips; and a CD-ROM with a Microsoft Project file that contains a work-breakdown structure (including step and activity dependencies). The end result is a detailed look at the intricacies and complexities of the entire BI project life cycle.

Despite the tight structure of the book, the authors are careful to allow for a fair amount of customization. Acknowledging that organizations will need to jump in at different points in the process, as well as schedule and manage their BI projects in a variety of ways, the book includes a section in each chapter that explains what will happen if you omit a particular step in the process. According to the authors, “Some project teams may choose to roll up project activities from multiple development steps into one step, while other project teams may not need to perform some steps or activities at all.”

Echoing Armstrong and Higgins’ open-ended approach, Moss and Atre portray a BI process that’s receptive to change. “Unlike most operational systems, which have sharply defined functionalities, BI applications must evolve to handle emerging information needs,” they write. “The best you can do at any given time is to have an environment that supports the current organizational goals and that can be easily adapted to new goals. Plan to design flexible and easy-to-change BI applications so that you have the ability to modify them when the organization’s goals change.” T

David English, a technology and business writer based in Greensboro, N.C., has written for PC World, Fortune and Forbes.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY TROY SPRINKLES