zondag 12 februari 2012

TOGAF and BI principles

Introduction
During study of TOGAF i was pointed on the usage of principles. Principles are guidelines/rules that are defined before/while building an Enterprise Architecture and these principles are seldom changed. Otherwise why is a principle a principle, off course ;-). As BI can be a part of the Enterprise Architecture careful thoughts should be taken about BI and principles. What kind of BI principles do you favour?

Background
TOGAF contains a couple rules and guidelines for use in applying TOGAF. One of these guidelines are architecture principles and these can be defined for the architecture being developed. These Architecture principles can be split up into three levels of principles: Enterprise, IT and Architecture.

How are principles defined? In TOGAF there is a standard way of describing principles. A name is given to the principle and each pricciple should have associated rationale and implication statements, for understanding and acceptance.

Example principle
Below an example of a principe that can be used in a Self Service BI project as i'm currently involved.

Name:Self Service BI
Statement:(Power)Users have access to information in such a way they can build reports themselves.
Rationale:The ability for (power) users to access their own reports and content lowers cost and backlog of the IT department..(Power)users know the meaning of information better than IT personal.
Implications:
  • (Power) users should have reporting tools available.
  • (Power) users can build reports without intervention of IT.
  • Reports are published on a reportserver where they are managed by IT personal.
  • Users will be trained in building reports, Meaning of BI and the usage of the reporting server.

Conclusion
If you want BI to be integrated in a Enterprise Architecture there will be a need to develop BI principles and perhaps you'l lbe asked to define the principles that will hold for years. So if you're a BI department think about the principles that you want to achieve or you are achieving.

Greetz,
Hennie

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