As a major part of what Project X Ltd does, we look at aligning business value as quickly as possible. We term this loosely under the Rapid Results monicer. I have had feedback from colleagues that using the term Rapid Results in IT scares the IT folks and often even the Business folks are skeptical.
Recently I have watched a transformation in how people are thinking about Business Intelligence in which it is now refered to as Visualization instead of Dashboards and Reports. I think that though this might be viewed as changing the words, there is a powerfull double edged sword on meeting the needs of our stakeholders as we transform this view of BI.
For me the difference is about creating constructs that allow our stakeholders to create their own view of the information so that they can start to come up with their own objects that help them in their work. Whether the construct/object ends up being a report, dashboard, alert, call to action or something else the double edged sword is that with freedom comes confusion.
In the case I watched, the users found it hard to live in a loose environment, though the data was governed and structured how they evolved their use of this information was a real challenge.
Simply, running a SQL query on a database is very different from working with a Microstrategy schema objects in a proper model. This has caused confusion in results, approach and value.
For me the lesson is in training and change management are crucial when changing the viewpoint of a word.
