Database Reference
In-Depth Information
As stated before, documentation does not have to be exhaustive to be of use. You can simply list the team
members' names, phone numbers, and email addresses, and we also recommend listing the hours they work.
Three years after the project is completed, it may be useful for the BI solution users to contact members of the
development team to ask questions. Offering something as simple as a list of contacts in the solution documents
can make life simpler (Figure
3-20
).
Figure 3-20.
Listing the team members
Determining the Schedule
In order to come up with a schedule, you need to have an idea of approximately how long each task will take. If
you are not very experienced with these types of tasks, such as developing cubes or ETL processes, coming up
with a schedule can be difficult. As you gain experience, it will be easier to make these estimates.
To get started, identify the list of tasks that you think you will need to accomplish for your particular BI
solution. All BI solutions share certain similarities; however, it is a given that there will be something distinct
about each one.
Try not to micromanage each task, but sum it up into sets of one to three hours of work. In an eight-hour day,
consider that breaks will be taken, emails will require answering, teammates will ask questions, phones will ring
and lunches will be scheduled. In an eight-hour day, the average person will complete about six hours of work.
As you can see in Figure
3-21
, the number of hours is strongly weighted toward the planning phase. This may
seem out of proportion, but in reality once you have defined the names of all your tables, columns, dimensions,
cubes, basic reports, and so on, their creation will be a much faster process. Therefore, much of the development
time is the planning phase. This includes selecting the datatype, setting certain properties, and defining the
relationships between various objects. Lastly, be sure to plan time for the communication process, which can
take several hours of meetings, depending upon the size of the project.
