IT ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES IN BI GOVERNANCE
Providing the right leadership for project execution is still critical, IT and the Project Management Office (PMO) are in a unique position in the organization to provide thought leadership and a strong methodology to run the projects. The business users heavily rely on IT to structure work streams along timelines and resources to achieve a committed dateline.
The BI Front-end work has seen a significant change over the last couple of years, before IT used to set the direction and the business was expected to follow. Given that this approach did not take into consideration many of the business needs, and it did not encompass a seamlessly defined user experience across initiatives, we are seeing a trend where the business users representatives are stepping up to the plate to participate in the decision making. While it is now a more collaborative effort that it used to, IT is still on the hook for critical decisions such as: selecting the proper tools, defining the BI architecture, establishing the proper infrastructure, implementing the standards as defined by the BI Governance Committee, Training the users and last but not least, coordinating support and maintenance across the business areas.
Data Modeling, which traditionally was done behind the scenes is now being introduced as part of the BI Governance model to ensure the business users will participate in the data modeling sessions to capture the right elements and accurately reflect business processes.
Data Integration, also known as data plumbing, was not something the business user had a lot of visibility into it before. Imagine the surprise of a business user when he was contacted by IT to be designated as a data steward; with no context or understanding of the activities that they were going to commit to. No wonder IT did not get much traction from the business users and had to resort to escalation processes to solve particular data challenges. In the new model IT partners with business to ensure success of the initiatives. In addition to providing the proper infrastructure, IT owns the Tool selection process, the data Integration Architecture and the implementation of data loading and data quality policies. Not to mention that IT has the responsibility to interface with the Data Stewards to resolve data situations and correct data issues as soon as possible.
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