Why Collaboration is Key to Enabling the Triangle of Success

by | May 15, 2014 | General BI

Reading Time: 4 minutes
Figure 1: The triangle of success

Figure 1: The triangle of success

In previous blog posts, we outlined several of the reasons why business intelligence (BI) projects fail, and we discussed the three sides of our Triangle of Success:

We also outlined the components that comprise each side of our triangle and we discussed the importance of each area as it relates to BI success. We also outlined the pitfalls to avoid during each stage so that your BI project doesn’t fail.

However, even mastering each side of our triangle will not, in and of itself, ensure that your project will be successful. No one component lies in a vacuum. Each one interacts with others during your BI deployment, and what will really determine the success of your implementation is how well you manage these interactions.

How Collaboration Fosters Productivity

There’s been a lot of discussion around collaborative technologies and how they can improve communication and productivity. One new technology is social collaboration platforms that use the simplicity of social networks, but in a workplace setting. These tools can be very effective to collaborate on projects such as BI implementations.

Let’s take a look at how we use collaboration here at Dimensional Insight. We use Teamer, our social collaboration platform, to ensure that all of our team members are working optimally on projects. If we look back at our Triangle of Success, we start the collaborative process at the outset when we are “defining the need.” At the very beginning, we set up a project as a series of steps that cover both process and technology. We collaborate on these activities by adding our meeting notes into Teamer that everyone on the project can view. We also post deliverables, which is important to ensure that team members, the sales team, account management and senior leadership are all aware of what needs to get done and what the deadlines are.

Customers can also be involved in the process. For example, after we conduct a needs analysis, we can upload project specifications so that sales can provide a proposal to the customer. Customers can also use the system to see what tasks are involved and keep up-to-date with the progress of a project. This all ties in to the “expectations” component of our triangle.

As projects progress, we have a record of all meeting notes in Teamer. As they near completion, we can post screenshots in the system to increase visibility.

Preventing Project Failures

In our first blog post of this series, we talked about the four broad categories of why BI projects fail:

  1. A process failure
  2. A technology failure
  3. A project leadership failure
  4. A failure in the interaction between these three areas

Here’s how collaboration can help:

It can eliminate process failures because team members are on the same page regarding target dates, what was discussed during meetings, progress on the project, and more. If there is a process failure, collaborative technologies provide visibility into them and allow leadership to get involved in order to resolve the problem.

If there is a technology failure during the project, the insight produced by collaboration enables companies to invest the right resources to address these issues.

Regarding project leadership, collaboration ensures that teams are on the same page, and that expectations are always known and are being met.

And, of course, it eliminates failures between the interaction of these areas, because it facilitates the interaction between team members.

If we go back to our Triangle of Success, you’ll see that each component of our triangle is really tied to all the other components. Collaboration is the technology that ensures the smooth interaction between all of these components, creating what is a loop for success.

Triangle-5 Triangle-6

If you’d like to learn more about Dimensional Insight’s collaborative BI solution, please

 

visit our website or

watch our recorded webinar

on DI Teamer.

Blog posts in this series:

  1. Why BI Projects Fail – And How You Can Avoid Failure through the Triangle of Success
  2. The Triangle of Success – Understanding Process
  3. The Triangle of Success – Understanding Technology
  4. The Triangle of Success – Understanding Project Leadership
  5. Why Collaboration is Key to Enabling the Triangle of Success

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