How to Start Your Business Intelligence Program: Part IV - Building Your Team
In Part III of the Starting Your Business Intelligence Program Series, we covered “Defining the Scope of the Program and Measurement Planning”, in this post, we’ll cover another extremely important aspect of successfully establishing your program, “Selecting Your Team”.
In order to maximize the value, effectiveness and success of your program, you should establish a cross-functional team that covers multiple areas of the business with committed, passionate team members who have firm grasp of the vision and the business. In establishing this team you’ll want to make sure you’ve have strategic leadership, technical leadership and business leadership. Below are some of the roles you’ll want to cover when building your business intelligence project team.
Strategic Leadership
Executive Sponsor. This role is key as this member is responsible for securing the funding for the project, establishing a clear strategic vision, monitoring the progress of the project and addressing any potential challenges/obstacles the may hinder success of the team.
Program Manager. Is the day-to-day owner of the project and ultimately responsible for the success of the program. The program owner is typically advocating the project across the organization, prioritization specific objectives, establishing business intelligence implementation standards across the organizations and making sure the project remains align with the vision established by the Executive Sponsor.
Technical Leadership
Business/Data Analyst. This role performs the hands-on keyboard development of dashboards, reports and visualizations, working closely with the Business Team Lead to ensure that deliverables are aligned with business objectives. They’re usually very knowledgeable of the platform and function as the subject matter expert. This may be an internal team member, but for new programs, this role may be fulfilled by a vendor or consultant.
Data Specialist/IT. This is often fulfilled by IT Team members and their goal is to make sure data is accurate and accessible to the Business/Data Analyst to be ingested into reports and visualizations.
Business Leadership
Business Team Lead. This is often the manager of a team who will be utilizing the end product, such as the Finance Team Manager or Marketing Team Manager. They highlight the opportunities within their team (preferably starting with quick-wins and then to increasingly complex initiatives). They advocate successful implementations within the organization and help team members understand how to leverage the value of the tools.
Every organization is different, so there is no one-size fits all approach to identifying which team members will fill those roles in your company. In some cases these roles may be covered by individual team members, in others one person may play multiple roles. That said, this cross-functional approach to assembling your team does provide the breadth and depth necessary to establish the proper mix of strategic, technical and business competency to competently execute your program.