Adapting to uncertain and evolving enterprise requirements: The case of business-driven business intelligence

Abstract

Abstract-Information systems today are expected to function in an increasingly dynamic world with many uncertainties. System development is seldom a linear progression from welldefined, fully-specified requirements to finished products that fully meet the initial requirements. More likely, there are ongoing cycles of exploration, design and implementation, taking into account evolving needs and capabilities, as well as lessons from earlier cycles. Existing requirements modeling and analysis techniques largely presume application settings that are stable and predictable. Can these techniques be used to support analysis in the new dynamic environment? Scenarios from the recent surge in demand for business intelligence capabilities in enterprises provide an interesting setting for examining organizational and IT responses to the challenges of high uncertainty and rapid change. In this paper, we apply existing requirements modeling techniques to these scenarios in order to uncover their inadequacies, and to identify research challenges.

User Related Challenges of Self-Service Business Intelligence

“…The results in this research show how the process to create reports is difficult and hinders the effectiveness of SSBI. Two categories and seven challenges are related to creating SSBI reports, which are described in section 4 Three challenges belong to this sub-category. Challenge #11: Difficult to create SSBI reports: Different users have different background and skills, which affect the process to create SSBI reports.…”

“…Technical BI specialists who have the technical skills needed to operate BI efficiently often serve more casual non-technical decision makers [2]. Today, more users are in need of BI since there is an increasingly dynamic world where accessible data is growing, which creates a bottleneck between BI specialists and casual users [2,4,5]. More flexible and usable BI systems are needed to cope with this change [4].…”

Towards Actionable Business Intelligence: Can System Dynamics Help?

“…Yu et al [26] presented some research challenges and directions for adaptive enterprise architecture and highlighted the need for a systematic framework that supports modeling, analyzing, and designing adaptive enterprise. In another study, Yu et al [28] examined capabilities of two existing requirements modeling techniques, namely goal-based social modeling (i * ) and process modeling, in capturing the dynamics and changes of application settings, found their inadequacies and modeling challenges, and finally outlined a set of desired features for a new comprehensive modeling framework. This work continues this line of research by integrating two existing modeling frameworks in a systematic way for facilitating decision making on response actions in adaptive enterprise.…”

Understanding User Uncertainty during the Implementation of Self-Service Business Intelligence: A Thematic Analysis

“…Traditionally, decision-makers needed to ask BI specialists, who were either IT specialists or very experienced BI users [1], for Business Intelligence (BI) reports or analyses. The growth of accessible data and the increased application of BI in operative domains have created a demand for new, more flexible and more usable BI systems [2]. In essence, SSBI systems are a novel response to this demand [1,3].…”