Business Intelligence Roadmap: The Complete Project Lifecycle for Decision-Support Applications

Risks are factors or conditions that may jeopardize a project. Risks should be assessed for the following six major variables :

1. The technology used for implementing the project

2. The complexity of the capabilities and processes to be implemented

3. The integration of various components and of data

4. The organization and its financial and moral support

5. The project team staff's skills, attitudes, and commitment levels

6. The financial investment in terms of ROI

Table 1.1 depicts a basic risk assessment matrix for these six variables, using the colors of a traffic light to indicate the severity of the risk:

Green = low risk ”go ahead with the project

Yellow = medium risk ”caution, proceed slowly

Red = high risk ”stop, reevaluate before proceeding

Each organization should develop its own appropriate variables and risk conditions for analyzing the risks most likely to impact its BI project. In developing that detailed risk assessment matrix for your organization, expand on the questions listed below.

• Technology risk

  - How mature are the selected technologies within the marketplace ?

  - How mature are the selected technologies within the organization?

  - How many different technologies will co-exist?

  - Do we have incompatible operating systems?

  - Do we have incompatible database management systems (DBMSs)?

Table 1.1. Basic Risk Assessment Matrix

• Complexity risk

  - How complex is the overall IT environment?

  - How complex is the BI application itself?

  - How extensively will workflow have to change? Will it have to be completely reengineered?

  - How many sites will be supported?

  - What is the degree of distribution of data, processes, and controls?

• Integration risk

  - How many interfaces will the BI application have?

  - Are there external interfaces?

  - How much source data redundancy exists?

  - Can the primary keys from various data sources be matched?

  - Do we have incompatible standards? No standards?

  - Do we have "orphan" records as a result of referential integrity problems?

• Organization risk

  - How much risk will business management tolerate ?

  - How much risk will IT management tolerate?

  - How much financial and moral support can we expect when the project encounters hurdles?

• Project team risk

  - How much experience does the team have with successful implementations of BI applications?

  - How broadly based is that experience?

  - How well balanced is the team?

  - How is team morale ?

  - How likely is it that we may lose one or more team members ?

  - Do our team members' skills cover all the basic disciplines?

  - Will the business representative be an active player?

  - How strong is the project manager?

• Financial investment risk

  - How fast can ROI be expected?

  - How likely is it that the costs will outweigh the benefits?

  - Can financial risk be mitigated by using only proven technologies?

Expand each of these risk categories with organization-specific detailed variables and detailed conditions for each of the three severity rankings (low, medium, high). Table 1.2 shows an example of a detailed risk assessment matrix taken from a case study.

The managers for the organization in this case study listed the detailed risk variables. Then for each variable, they described the conditions for each of the three risk severity rankings. For example, in the category for business workflow support:

• Low risk = Supports business workflow seamlessly

• Medium risk = Requires some manual intervention

• High risk = Requires significant manual intervention

Table 1.2. Case Study: A Detailed Risk Assessment Matrix

The managers then selected the applicable risk severity ranking for each variable by highlighting the description that most accurately portrayed the condition of their BI project using the colors green, yellow, and red. Out of 21 variables, they rated only two variables low risk, six variables medium risk, and thirteen variables high risk. The managers decided that the overall risk for this BI project was high.

Having a realistic assessment of the severity of potential risks will help the project team create realistic estimates and expectations for the BI project. Conversely, unidentified and unmanaged risks can result in project failure or even jeopardize the entire BI initiative.