This talk discusses Agile Data Warehouse Design. This is a step-by-step method for data warehousing / business intelligence (DW/BI) professionals to better collect and translate business intelligence requirements into successful dimensional data warehouse designs.
The method utilizes BEAM (Business Event Analysis and Modeling) – an agile approach to dimensional data modeling that can be used throughout analysis and design to improve productivity and communication between DW designers and BI stakeholders. BEAM builds upon the body of mature “best practice” dimensional DW design techniques, and collects “just enough” non-technical business process information from BI stakeholders to allow the modeler to slot their business needs directly and simply into proven DW design patterns.
BEAM encourages DW/BI designers to move away from the keyboard and their entity relationship modeling tools and begin “white board” modeling interactively with BI stakeholders. With the right guidance, BI stakeholders can and should model their own BI data requirements, so that they can fully understand and govern what they will be able to report on and analyze.