Microsoft Data Warehouse Toolkit —读书笔记(二):定义业务需求

第一章 定义业务需求

In this chapter you learn the following:

·         The importance of understanding business requirements and securing solid business sponsorship

·         How to define enterprise-level business requirements, including the interview process, developing analytic themes, linking themes to business processes, developing the data warehouse bus matrix, and prioritizing business processes with senior management

·         How to plan the initial business process dimensional model implementation and gather project-level business requirements

·         What a typical requirements summary document looks like and how it links to analytic themes and business process implementations

一、       The Most Important Determinant of Long-Term Success

BI项目成功的关键因素：实现商业价值。

记住一点：技术是很重要，但商业价值才是必须的。

 

二、       揭露商业价值

确定商业价值包括以下以个步骤：

·         Recruiting strong business sponsorship

·         Defining enterprise-level business requirements

·         Prioritizing business requirements

·         Planning the project

·         Defining project-level business requirements

1.      找到赞助者

You need to find at least one person in the organization who scores well in each of the following areas:

·         Visionary(空想者): Someone who has a sense for the value and potential of information and some clear, specific ideas on how to apply it.

·         Resourceful（有充分资源的人）: Someone who is able to obtain the necessary resources and facilitate the organizational change the data warehouse will bring about.

·         Reasonable(理解DW/BI的人): Someone who can temper his or her enthusiasm with the understanding that it takes time and resources to build a major information system.

2.      定义企业级业务需求

A.     建立项目初始边界

B.     收集并文档化企业级需求

i.准备阶段

包括需要访问哪个人；调查表

ii.与业务和IT人员面谈

获取详细的业务需求和源系统状况

iii.采访总结与主题分析

分需求进行归类

将需求总结稿交给面谈者审查，但提出建议。

iv.定义支持分析主题的业务过程

一个业务过程通常对应着一个源业务系统。

对于那些需要用到多个源系统数据的主题，则有其它主题有依赖关系。

v.建立初始的数据仓库需求矩阵

vi.建立总体需求文件

Once you’ve completed the overall requirements document, the conceptual foundation of the DW/BI system is in place.

 

3.      确立优先级

The output of the prioritization process is a list of business processes in priority order.

4.      Gathering Project Requirements

The same three steps you followed in the enterprise requirements process apply to the project requirements process: preparation, interviews, and documentation.

The goal with this round of interviews is to drill down on the selected business process in detail to understand the analyses, data models, and technologies required to make it work

ALTERNATIVES TO INDIVIDUAL INTERVIEWS(分组讨论)

If interviews won’t work in your situation, we have had success with group requirements gathering sessions, but they are more risky. If you must do group sessions, here are a few tips:

• Preparation is even more important. You have to know the business, and you also have to know what you want to accomplish and how you are going to go about it.
• Have a clear agenda with times listed for each section, breaks, and food and drink. Reserve a good room with plenty of space and comfortable chairs. Make sure you have all the tools you need—flip charts, markers, white boards, overheads, computers, and a projector—whatever makes sense for your plan.
• Get a strong, experienced design meeting leader to run the meetings. You have only a short time. If someone takes the meeting off course, you won’t get what you need.

三、       业务需求范例：Adventure Works Cycles

Adventure Works Cycles (AWC)业务背景如下：

自行车及配件的跨国制造与销售商。the company is based in Bothell, Washington, USA and has regional sales offices in several countries.

1.      面谈前准备

仔细阅读相关资料，如年报、市场计划、竞争对手分析，参加高级管理层的计划会议。

A.     AWC的基本业务需求

i.各产品的销售额历史情况

ii.客户的地区分布历史情况

iii.不同渠道的销售情况

iv.客户/销售渠道情况

Table 1.4: Adventure Works Cycles Customers by Sales Channel Snapshot
	TOTAL CUSTOMERS	ACTIVE CUSTOMERS	$US SALES (OOO)	ORDER COUNT	AVG $ PER ORDER
Reseller	701	467	18,715	901	23,751
Internet	18,484	11,377	9,041	13,050	827
Total	19,185	11,844	27,757	13,951	2,308

 

 

v.进一步的分析与挖掘

As the DW/BI system manager, you should continue from here, researching top reseller customers and their historical buying patterns (seasonality, product lifecycle, and so on). Investigate the Internet customers as well because you have demographic information on them that tells you who are they, what they buy, and where they come from.

B.     面谈计划

首先要找到一份组织机构图，并确定访问哪些人员

2.      确定企业业务需求

任务：理解业务过程与规则，找到涉众。

After you’ve discussed roles and responsibilities, you might start the interview by asking Brian: How do you tell when you’re doing a great job? If he’s as smart as you think, his answer might be: “When my sales planning is accurate, when my sales grow, when I can leverage special offers, and when I have good customer satisfaction.” That would be quite an answer, but it’s a gold mine to drill down into his information needs. Your job is to react to his answer point by point, drawing out more detail. The following summary captures the results of that drill-down.

A.     需求

i. 销售计划

a)      Growth analysis: Overall market, new products, new geographies, new sales people.

b)      Customer analysis: Who are the top customers, how have they changed over the last year?

c)      Territory analysis: Where are top customers located, what are the current sales territories, and how balanced are they? How does this map to sales regions?

ii.销售业绩

Brian also wants to look at orders from a sales rep perspective. The first thing he wants to see at the start of the week is how his sales reps are doing year to date. If Brian sees a problem in the higher level data, he wants to be able to drill down to detailed orders for individual reps. Of course, Brian has other reports he would like to see: for example, top 20 customers and orders by Reseller versus online.

iii.基本销售报表

按订单量对区域内的客户排名；发现流失客户并采取措施

iv.报价单

产品的价格经常变化，需要把价格的变化标识出来，并且标识出特价商品和相应的客户。

v.特价销售

向最大的潜在客户推销物价商品

vi.客户满意度

通过客户投诉来了解客户的满意度和产品质量 ；通过订购日期与发货日期时间长短比较；通过回退商品的百分比比较

以上将是客户满意度计分卡的开始。

vii.国际化支持

因为在多个国家有销售部门，因此销售材料需要有多种语言，目前是由各销售部门自己翻译的。但是产品标识和说明书已经是双语的。

viii.当前状况

目前的业务系统不能提供有效的支持，如实时报表；简单的操作

 

B.     关键成功因素

·         Easy access to basic sales data for the whole field organization

·         Flexible reporting and analysis tools

·         All the data in one place (especially sales and forecast data)

3.      得出分析主题和业务过程

Analytic Theme	Inferred or Requested Analyses	Supporting Business Process	Comments
Sales Planning	- Reseller historical orders analyses	- orders	By customer, by territory, by sales region (from state)
	- Sales forecast	- orders	Forecast is a business process that uses orders data as an input
Sales Performance	- Orders by current territory	- orders
	- Orders by original territory	- orders
	- Sales rep performance report	- orders - forecast	Orders and forecast by sales rep
Sales Reporting	- Resellers ranked by orders in a given territory	- orders
	- Churned customer list	- orders	Customers who have not ordered in X months
Price Lists	- Current price list	- orders	This is a connectivity issue, not a data warehouse issue
Special Offers	- Relevant customers by territory based on orders history	- orders
	- Inventory status (out of stock)	- inventory
Customer (Reseller) Satisfaction	- Calls by complaint type, product and customer attributes	- call tracking
	- Order metrics of satisfaction	- orders	e.g. due date versus ship date
	- Returns by reseller by return reason	- returns
International Support	- Local language translations of Product descriptions	- n/a (product dimension)	This is a transaction system problem. We need to make sure we can handle multiple languages in the DW/BI system, but the source system has to capture them when new products are created.

4.      确定业务过程优先级

以下分析主题的数据来自多个业务过程:

·         Sales performance: Orders and forecast

·         Customer satisfaction: Call tracking, orders, and returns

Business Processes Derived from Brian Welker’s Interview
LETTER	BUSINESS PROCESS	SUPPORTED ANALYTIC THEMES
A	Orders	Orders reporting and analysis, orders forecasting, advertising effectiveness, customer satisfaction, production forecasting, product profitability, customer profitability
B	Orders forecast	Sales performance, business planning, production forecast
C	Call tracking	Call center performance, customer satisfaction, product quality, customer profitability, product profitability
D	Returns	Customer satisfaction, product quality, customer profitability, product profitability, net sales

5.      Adventure Works Cycles Bus Matrix

	Dimensions
Business Process	Date	Product	Employee	Customer (Reseller)	Customer (Internet)	Sales Territory	Currency	Channel	Promotion	Call Reason	Facility
Sales Forecasting	X	X	X	X	X	X	X
Orders	X	X	X	X	X	X	X	X	X
Call tracking	X	X	X	X	X	X				X
Returns	X	X		X	X	X	X		X		X

 

6.      Business Requirements for the Orders Project

Getting to work on the orders business process requires holding an additional set of interviews to drill down on orders-related analyses.