Agile Analytics: A Value-Driven Approach to Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing

Agile Software Development Series

by Ken W. Collier

Using Agile methods, you can bring far greater innovation, value, and quality to any data warehousing (DW), business intelligence (BI), or analytics project. However, conventional Agile methods must be carefully adapted to address the unique characteristics of DW/BI projects. In Agile Analytics, Agile pioneer Ken Collier shows how to do just that. Collier introduces platform-agnostic Agile solutions for integrating infrastructures consisting of diverse operational, legacy, and specialty systems that mix commercial and custom code. Using working examples, he shows how to manage analytics development teams with widely diverse skill sets and how to support enormous and fast-growing data volumes. Collier’s techniques offer optimal value whether your projects involve “back-end” data management, “front-end” business analysis, or both. Collier brings together proven solutions you can apply right now―whether you’re an IT decision-maker, data warehouse professional, database administrator, business intelligence specialist, or database developer. With his help, you can mitigate project risk, improve business alignment, achieve better results―and have fun along the way.

Genres: Business, Bisexual, Software, Technology, Nonfiction, Technical, Computers

368 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 2011

Reviews

[Daniel Galassi]

Good coverage of agile topics and practices including user stories, team work, project automation and how to introduce agile aspects to BI projects.
There are some practical pieces of advice to improve the way agile software configuration management and agile release management work.
No consulting clutter, no obscure concepts. I clearly identified some of the scenarios and improvement opportunities mentioned in this book from my experience in business intelligence projects.
Some of the practices may be difficult to implement if you are using COTS or off the shelf BI tools, or at least it won't be as easy as described by the author. Case in point: version control and continuous delivery, given the nature of the BI "code".

Overall great description of agile projects. A bit detached from corporate environments in terms of sandpit environments and CD practices in the BI world though, which is understandable.

[Bernd]

This book's title is a misnomer. The subtitle is more fitting. It does a good job in applying the well established tenets of agile software development to the data warehousing space. But as so often today, "Business Intelligence" here too is interpreted more as the infrastructure, and less as the actual insight derived from data. As such, this book totally neglects its main topic, "Analytics". Little can be found in terms of how to derive business insight in an agile fashion. Still, three stars for the solid coverage on agile data warehousing, even if not as novel of an idea anymore. The ideas documented here in that space have been practiced by DWH teams for years.

[John]

overall, not bad, if you were reading it seven years ago. unfortunately the technologies described here are out of date. the same book in a Hadoop / Big Data setting, would be super valuable.

[Ram Ramalingam]

"Great practical book that would help the traditional BI practitioners make the leap towards successful DWH implementations that will actually be used - good pointers to seminal resources around Ambler, Sadalage, Fowler, Kerievsky, Jankovsky, David Hay etc. Fir those who want take the Kimball and Inmon patterns to the next level - wish Ken had gone deeper into product prioritization/slicing and Continuous delivery - the rest looks well covered for kick-starting the next Agile Analytics product."

[Louis Marier]

A good book for an introduction to "Agile" methods in a data warehouse environment. However, I didn't found it easy to read, despite the real-world example that evolve in each chapter. There is a lot of references (maybe too many) and repetitive explanations. An honest book for the price I paid (around 35$ CAD) anyway.

[Alex]

This is a very good book for anyone who wants to do data warehousing in an agile way. It includes a good overview of agile and the agile philosophy, as well as practical tips on tactical steps.

But a very good book for work counts as a good book overall, in my mind, hence the 3 stars.

[Groot]

I know. I typically only post about my favorite books in areas of general interest (or a couple of hated books that roused my ire), but this well-written book was that good, despite its abstruse subject.

[Clarence Bakirtzidis]

Nothing ground-breaking. If you're new to Agile development then you might get more out of this book than I did.

[Christophe Addinquy]

ma note de lecture en français ici

[Sam]

A good overview of trying to do agile delivery with the constraints and issues with BI and DW projects.

[Rich Dammkoehler]

Proof you can do anything in incremental ways. Good insights on DW in general. A bit more on how testing was done would be nice. I never 'got' how mechanically it was tested.

[Atif Shaikh]

Good for those in analytics, BI, Datawarehousing with more focus on 'Doing Agile' rather than 'Being Agile'.

Nothing special for those already well versed in Agile.

[Jawaid Akhter]

Understand and develop skill of Agile Software Project Management

[Doug Lautzenheiser]

Great book on how to apply Agile methodology to Business Intelligence/Data Warehouse projects.