Business Intelligence Journal | Vol. 18, No. 2
TDWI Member Exclusive
June 17, 2013
New and improved! It’s been a familiar pitch from vendors for years. In this issue of
the Business Intelligence Journal, we explore several new trends and technologies that
are improving the BI landscape.
Senior editor Hugh J. Watson is joined by Barbara H. Wixom and Thilini
Ariyachandra in reviewing the new crop of BI talent: where to find it, what skills
these job seekers have, and what you can expect from these candidates.
Nancy Couture looks at how best to adopt a methodology new to many organizations—agile BI—in your data warehouse development efforts. As she explains, the
transition to agile is difficult. It takes a new mindset, not just a new methodology.
There has long been stress between IT and business users. For many—including the
subject of our Experts’ Perspective column—creating an IT/business partnership is
a new and challenging endeavor. Our experts offer suggestions for evaluating and
solving this age-old dilemma.
The Business Intelligence Journal is exploring a new topic with the publication of
James B. Thomann and David L. Well’s discussion of ethics in business intelligence.
When is collecting data crossing the line in terms of confidentiality? What
obligations does an enterprise have to such ethical principles as informed consent,
anonymity, privacy, and transparency? These are weighty issues with which many
enterprises are still coming to terms.
Also relatively new for many enterprises is the task of integrating unstructured
data into a data warehouse, whether the data be e-mail messages, log files, or social
media postings. TDWI’s research director for advanced analytics, Fern Halper,
takes a look at text analytics and the differences and trade-offs between manual and
automated text analytics processes.
Claudia Imhoff and Colin White explore how collaborative BI, although not
new, is moving from theory to reality. They explore the different technologies and
the underlying architecture involved, and offer best practices for implementing a
collaborative BI environment.
In this issue we also examine the benefits that JDRF (formerly the Juvenile Diabetes
Research Foundation) enjoyed when it implemented a new dashboard shared with
more than 100 chapters across the organization.
One of our many goals is to help you understand and prepare for what’s new. What
new challenges are you facing? We welcome your feedback and comments; please
send them to [email protected].
James E. Powell
Editorial Director
Business Intelligence Journal
IN THIS ISSUE
- Insights on Hiring for BI and Analytics
Hugh J. Watson, Barbara H. Wixom, and Thilini Ariyachandra
- Best Practices for Adopting Agile
Methodologies for Data Warehouse Development
Nancy Couture
- Managing Ethics in Business Intelligence
James B. Thomann and David L. Wells
- Text Analytics Hits the Mainstream
Fern Halper
- BI Q&A: Nonprofit Makes Great Strides with
Dashboards and BI
Linda L. Briggs
- Collaborative BI: Theory Becomes Reality
Claudia Imhoff and Colin White
- BI Experts’ Perspective: Forging an IT/Business
Partnership
Anne Buff, Matt McGivern, Anthony Politano, David Stodder,
and Nancy Williams