Monday, September 15, 2014

BTM Decision Support - Agile Solutions




BTM Decision support solution — requirements 

Agility is key and there is a need to iterate rapidly through questions, answers ("art of the possible") and refinement cycles. 

Support the 4 common scenarios (see agile decision making for BTM ):


  1. BTM tool experts to use tools to give the answers. In BTM these questions will arise often from many different people. They need to be answered quickly (an hour) with little effort (5-10 mins work)
  2. End users experts need to get good enough answers for themselves (without recourse to an BTM tool expert). Of questions arising perhaps 20% will require this. Solutions need to be able put in place quickly (within an hour) with little effort (30 mins work)
  3. Non-expert end users may want simple portal solutions with on-line analytics. Of questions arising perhaps 10% will require this. Solutons need to be put in place fairly quickly (a day or so) and with relatively little work (a few hours).
  4. Non-expert end users may want simple task specific tablet/phone applications. Of questions arising perhaps 5% will require this. Solutions need to be put in place moderately quickly (a week or so) and with only moderate effort (a few days)


In all cases:

  • the exact path through the labyrinth of data may be different for every question (and in some cases changes to the data model may be required on the fly). 
  • the data may be presented in many different ways (report, diagram, chart, an interactive graphic etc.)
  • the data may be captured and aggregated (from systems, people, models etc.) and it may be mechanism may be needed by which this data can be validated, maintained, trigger reviews, interrogated. etc.
  • data access rules need to be applied to constrain who can see and change what.
  • the solution used on a early scenarios provides a prototype for the solution to the next scenario


Our approach - we build our solutions on the world's best BTM/EPM platform and extend that so that:

  1. BTM tool experts give the answers: we use dynamic reporting (which defined paths through the data); dynamic model templates; dynamic visualizations to support this.
  2. End users experts get answers for themselves: we place the dynamic reports/analytics in a user accessible information portal to support this. 
  3. Non-expert end users may want simple portal solutions with on-line analytics: we use sing a mix of  reporting/visualizations tools (using the data paths defined in early steps); dynamic portal configurations (navigators, layouts, workflows, etc.).
  4. Non-expert end users may want simple task specific tablet/phone applications: we do this using a simple framework that re-uses the paths defined in earlier steps and some common extendable display templates.

Usually the data is reasonable well defined in the 1st two scenarios and the latter two scenarios are principally focused on supporting better interactions with the data and provider clearer insights.

Why many fixed OTB solutions fail:

  • they make it too hard to change the data model
  • they make it too hard to change the specific path through the data
  • they don't provide interfaces for preferred device mix (PC, tablet, phone)
Why many flexible solutions fail
  • they don't provide the full mix of output types (report, chart, diagram, interactive)
  • they don't provide access control
  • they don't provide mechanism for data aggregation, maintenance and integration







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