Agile Analytics: A Value-Driven Approach to Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing (Agile Software Development Series)

"This book does a great job of explaining why and how you would implement Agile Analytics in the real world. Ken has many lessons learned from actually implementing and refining this approach. Business Intelligence is definitely an area that can benefit from this type of discipline." -Dale Zinkgraf, Sr. Business Intelligence Architect "One remarkable aspect of Agile Analytics is the breadth of coverage-from product and backlog management to Agile project management techniques, from self-organizing teams to evolutionary design practices, from automated testing to build management and continuous integration. Even if you are not on an analytics project, Ken's treatment of this broad range of topics related to products with a substantial data-oriented flavor will be useful for and beyond the analytics community." -Jim Highsmith, Executive Consultant, ThoughtWorks, Inc., and author of Agile Project Management "Agile methods have transformed software development, and now it's time to transform the analytics space. Agile Analytics provides the knowledge needed to make the transformation to Agile methods in delivering your next analytics projects." -Pramod Sadalage, coauthor of Refactoring Databases: Evolutionary Database Design "This book captures the fundamental strategies for successful business intelligence/analytics projects for the coming decade. Ken Collier has raised the bar for analytics practitioners-are you up to the challenge?" -Scott Ambler, Chief Methodologist for Agile and Lean, IBM Rational Founder, Agile Data Method "A sweeping presentation of the fundamentals that will empower teams to deliver high-quality, high-value, working business intelligence systems far more quickly and cost effectively than traditional software development methods." -Ralph Hughes, author of Agile Data Warehousing

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. Part I focuses on Agile project management techniques and delivery team coordination, introducing core practices that shape the way your Agile DW/BI project community can collaborate toward success Part II presents technical methods for enabling continuous delivery of business value at production-quality levels, including evolving superior designs; test-driven DW development; version control; and project automation 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.