TDWI Local

We cordially invite you to attend our upcoming TDWI Washington D.C. Chapter meeting on Friday, Aug 21, 2009. Come meet other local BI/DW professionals, swap business cards, share ideas, and exchange career advice while listening to quality presentations in a vendor-neutral setting, which is the hallmark of TDWI education. See our meeting agenda below.

When: Thursday, October 22, 2009

Time: 9:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.

Location: Idea Integration
3922 Pender Drive
Fairfax, VA 22030

AGENDA

8:30 a.m. Registration and Continental Breakfast

9:00 a.m. Welcome: Ann Summers, Chapter President

9:30 a.m. Speaker: Larissa Moss, President, Methods Focus Inc.

Extreme Scoping: An Agile Approach for Data Warehouse and Business Intelligence Projects

As you are managing your BI/DW project, you draw upon your past experience as a project manager. But to your dismay, you find that in spite of your experience, your BI/DW project is unusually difficult to manage. The requirements appear to be a “moving target.” Communication between staff members takes too long. Assigning tasks in a traditional way seems to result in too much rework. Using a traditional methodology does not work. To top it all off, the business users are pressuring you for quick deliverables (90 days or less) while they are still “fine-tuning” their requirements. As the project team scrambles to meet those expectations, data standardization is skipped, testing is cut short, documentation is not done, and quality is compromised. The end result is often an independent data mart – always accompanied by the promise to clean it up later and to consolidate it with the other silo data marts (and data warehouses), which regrettably rarely happens. Sound familiar? So, how can you “have your cake and eat it too?” In other words, how can you build an integrated DW with quality and still deliver BI solutions in 90 days? You have to set aside some of the traditional project management disciplines and try a new approach. In this presentation, you will learn about “extreme scoping,” a development method based on software releases. The presentation topics include:

- Why traditional project management does not work on DW/BI projects

- Software release concept

- Extreme Scoping™ project planning process

- DW/BI program management

A question and answer session will follow the presentation.

Larissa Moss is president of Method Focus Inc. She has 29 years of IT experience, with focus on data warehousing and information management for the past 20 years. She frequently speaks at conferences worldwide on the topics of data warehousing, business intelligence, master data management, enterprise architecture, data integration, information quality, project management and agile development methodologies. She co-authored the books Data Warehouse Project Management, Impossible Data Warehouse Situations, Business Intelligence Roadmap, and Data Strategy. She is currently working on her book Extreme Scoping™: An Agile Approach to DW and BI. Her articles are frequently published in DM Review, Teradata Magazine, Cutter IT Journal, TDWI Journal of Data Warehousing, TDWI Flash Point and EIMInsight Magazine. She can be reached at methodfocus@earthlink.net.

11:45 a.m. Closing Remarks

12:00 Noon  Adjournment

Presentations

Larissa Moss October 2009

We cordially invite you to attend our upcoming TDWI Washington D.C. Chapter meeting on Friday, Aug 21, 2009. Come meet other local BI/DW professionals, swap business cards, share ideas, and exchange career advice while listening to quality presentations in a vendor-neutral setting, which is the hallmark of TDWI education. See our meeting agenda below.

When: Friday, Aug 21^st , 2009

Time: 9:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.

Location: Sallie Mae, 12061 Bluemont Way, Reston, VA 20190

AGENDA

8:30 a.m. Registration and Continental Breakfast

9:00 a.m. Welcome: Ann Summers, Chapter President

9:30 a.m. Speaker:   Nancy Williams Vice President Of Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing
Decision Path Consulting Inc

“Aligning BI and Performance Management”

“Aligning BI” and “Performance Management” While they are both aimed at the same objective, supporting improved organizational performance, BI and Performance Management are often managed as separate, uncoordinated programs. This presentation will address the pitfalls of unaligned programs. It will also present practical guidelines for achieving BI and Performance Management program alignment.

Nancy Williams is the vice president of DecisionPath Consulting’s data warehousing and business intelligence practice and brings more than 20 years of business and technical experience to the firm. Nancy is also a long-standing instructor for the Data Warehousing Institute (TDWI) and teachesa range of courses ranging from BI program management to data modeling. She also serves as a TDWI judge annual best practices awards. Nancy provides technical and strategic leadership for the organization as well as hands-on guidance for commercial and government clients. She has provided BI/DW consulting support for numerous commercial and government clients, including Marriott International, McCormick and Company, Legg Mason, Travelers Insurance, the US Treasury and the Social Security Administration Her areas of expertise include BI/DW assessments, strategy, program management, business justifications, portfolio development, information requirements, and logical data modeling. She is the co-author of the book “The Profit Impact of Business Intelligence” and has published numerous articles in leading industry publications.

10:15 a.m. Networking Break

10:45 a.m. Panel discussion: “Bringing Business and IT Together- Organizational Challenges”

Panelists will include 
- Greg Summer, EDW Project Manager at State Department from Creative Information Technologies, Inc
- Nancy Williams, Vice President Of Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing, Decision Path Consulting Inc
- And Others

Moderator : 
Cheryl Hannan: Chapter Secretary - TDWI D.C Chapter

Join our lively panel discussion about the common challenges organizations face in bringing Business and IT together. Learn from others about the approaches they have used in overcoming these challenges such as:

- Getting the appropriate involvement from the business customer
- Helping the business users understand what a Data warehouse is and how to efficiently use it
- Determining how to work with resistant source system partners
- Engaging executive level sponsors
- Handling the politics associated with individuals who do not want to share their data
- Determining the best techniques for identifying and escalating issues related to risk
- Communicating the benefits of the use of BI tools to end users
- Educating users regarding the purpose and mission of the data warehouse and BI and finding the best ways to guide them through the paradigm shift

11:45 a.m. Closing Remarks

12:00 Noon  Adjournment

Presentations