Transcript

Building a Lean Analytics

Culture

Justin Ball, BI Developer, Nature’s Sunshine Products

Remove Constraints

Remove Waste

Give Ownership

Constraints

Constraints

Degree of Self-ServiceC

on

stra

ints

IT Analyst Manager Director

IT CreatesParameterized

Dashboards Business Creates

ParameterizedDashboards Many Org

Levels Using BI Tool

IT CreatesMany

Reports

Constraints

Reusable Enterprise Objects

• Data Warehouse

• Semantic Layer, Virtual Database

• Data and Object Security

• Report Sharing System

• Codebase

• Pre-calculate common metrics

Constraints

• Document Data Flow

• Data is your product, treat

the same as manufacturing

treats production line

Constraints

“After looking closely at all the information that we’ve gathered, we have

decided to further extend the Beta period so we can improve Pottermore

before giving more people access,” – Pottermore Blog Post

Constraints

"What is impressive ... is our ability to deliver every time with a high level of

innovation and creativity in a large and diverse open world,"

"We are applying the very [same] product template to our other strong

franchises to bring them back to Assassin's Creed blockbuster profitable

status,“ - Yves Guillemot (Ubisoft CEO)

Constraints

Use proven software development practices:

• Everyone has needed components of

application stack for them to work in

isolation

• Ability to do branching from master

codebase

• Frequent checkouts, merging

• Checkout only the piece of code you

need to work on, test in your own

environment

Constraints

Use proven software dev practices

• Shorter Dev Cycles

• Automate QA

• Automate deploys

• Removes risk

• Enables fast deploys

and fixes

Constraints

Don’t be Pottermore,

be Assassin’s Creed!

Transportation

Waste

Over Processing

Inventory

Skills

Defects

Motion

Over Producing

Waiting

Waste

Movement of Code

• Review anywhere code is moved

• How does it get there, what manual

work is done

• How is code merged, how are

conflicts resolved

• What type of movement is involved

for QA

Transportation

Waste

BI Code Flow Diagram

Master Codebase

Dev Branch

(2)

(4b) Test Stage(5) Prod(6)

Dev Branch

Dev Branch(2

)

(4a)

Smoke Tests

Waste

Inventory

Code Repository

• Structure and Organization

• How is versioning done, any

automation?

Codebase Organization

• Use self-documenting tools where

applicable

• Name packages, procs, functions,

objects appropriately

• Use comments, descriptions, etc

Waste

Motion

Guiding Dev Activities

• Auto Complete in Dev Tools

• Organizing workflow (user stories,

iterations, etc)

Code Motion

• Manual work that can be

automated?

• Any steps that can eliminated?

Waste

Waiting

Developers Waiting

• Shorten dev wait time on code

running (are there simple areas

where performance can be

improved)

• Waiting on personnel

• Database connections

• Network changes (firewall)

• Dependent dev work

Waste

Waiting

End Users Waiting

• Performance

• Bug fixes

• New features

• Uptime

Waste

Over Producing

To many products

• Dashboards that can be

consolidated

• Move many reports to one

dashboard

• Consolidate reporting platforms

• Is more likely to happen at an

organization level rather than within

one group

Waste

Over ProcessingTo many features

• Occurs when going through details

of user story to early

• Reduced by self-service (not

creating content in report that’s not

going to be used)

• Wait for users to request something

or get their approval while

collaborating before implementing

Waste

• .

Defects

Handling Bug Fixes

• Be capable of quick fixes

• Cut out unnecessary code and

features to reduce risk

• Remove unnecessary environments

• Prioritize bugs

Waste

Skills

Skillsets of Others

• Identify highly analytical end users –

these will be your champions

• Get to know skills of co-workers

Skillsets of Team

• Help organization understand

capabilities of Analytics group

• Be involved with cross-functional

projects

• Self-service training acts as form of

evangelizing

Waste

QA

QAQA

• Identify waste in data flow

• Example: Doing QA on the same

data multiple times

Waste

Unnecessary Feedback Loop

• Self-service eliminates unnecessary

feedback between end user and

developer creating report/dashboard

• Maintain Feedback for information

needed to support self-service

architecture

• Make it a priority to teach people

who will help themselves

Waste

Real Time Reports

Put in Transactional, BI?

In Transactional:

• Waste with transactional system resources

• End-users constrained when changes needed

In BI:

• Use BI resources, offload transactional system and gain BI performance

• End-users can modify report content w/out IT

Ownership

Ownership

Self-service gives ownership of

analytics to business

Ownership

Give ownership of backlog to

business

Need an IT Champion

… and a Business Champion

Need one great developer to

free up time for another to

evangelize

End user champions

organically scale self-service


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