I am in my final semester for a Masters in Business Intelligence. I started the program two years ago, hence the lack of activity this site. I look forward to writing again after graduation.

I would like to write my thesis on organizational issues around business intelligence. Instead of the typical BI technology slant, I want to examine best practices in organization design, talent development, and operational processes for BI and business analytics. I’m still working out the details but it could explore topics such as:

• Factors that would influence one organizational design over another — e.g. centralized vs. decentralized, utility model of buying analytic talent vs. embed capability in the business,
• Approaches for talent development — e.g. grow internally, hire from outside, essential skills, etc.,
• Operational management of business intelligence projects — what processes must be in place, who owns them, IT-ownership vs. business-ownership, agile vs. big bang project management,
• Enterprise cultural and change management issues related to becoming an analytic organization.

To help me settle on a topic, I’m searching for materials that discuss these ideas. If you have ideas on the topics or potential resources, please drop me a note or enter a comment. In the near term, I’m specifically looking for:

1. Current resources that explore these topics including books, webcasts, journal articles, white papers, etc.  Must be published in the past two years.
2. Names of thought leaders regarding the people/process side of business intelligence with design and implementation experience in larger enterprises.  I’ve seen most of the big consulting company and vendor materials.  I’d like to develop a list of boutique firms and independent thought leaders to get a different perspective on the topic.

Thanks much. Stay tuned. I hope to eventually publish this thesis.

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Tags: bi, business intelligence, organizational design, process, thesis

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 16th, 2011 at 11:47 am and is filed under Analytics, Business Intelligence. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.