Setting up standards

[Sep2013]

Hi my organisation has just bpught cognos and is going to start using it. I wish to set up procedures? Guidelines ot strategies for it e.g. what is lifecyclr, what kind testing... any standards followed in cognos report lifecycle. Can you please suggest according to your experience what will be the best methodology?
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[cadams]

That all depends on you IT governance procedures,

I've managed/designed and run Cognos environments for HSBC, UBS, Merrill Lynch, Bank of America and many Government organisations where we were running 10s of thousands of reports an hr, with many teams of developers. We had Dev, UAT, QA and Prod environments where nothing would be sent to prod with out thorough testing and change control procedures. I've also worked in many organisations where none of the above applies. What I'm trying to say is it all depends on your organisation.

Though I would personally try and have at least 3 environments, Scratch, Dev and Prod, Dev where all development performed and tested, and a production environment. Scratch, it for you to play with... Testing upgrades, writing scripts etc..

But the beauty of Cognos is, it is what you make of it, you have the opportunity to make it the best thing since sliced bread, but you also have the opportunity to make it the most detested product in the organisation.

No pressure.

[Romeo]

Yes, as @cadams says, it depends on your organization.
In all the organizations I worked with, they usually have the DEVELOPMENT, QUALITY ASSURANCE and PRODUCTIVE environment. Also you could have another type of environment called SANDBOX.
DEV, QA and PROD are usually using the same Cognos version and usually have the same level of Fix Pack. These environments usually have the same content. Obviously you develop new models/cubes/reports in DEV, deploy them in QA and if everything is ok, you deploy them in PROD.
SBX can be something where you could test new versions of Cognos, new scripts, etc.

Cheers!

[Sep2013]

Thanks a lot for your reply.
In my previous organisations I have always followed the process with 3 env. which is dev, test and prod.
However, in the current one I have the opportunity to introduce standards from scratch. We have two environments called as test and dev, however, business users and IT all create reports directly in prod and there is no procedure of QA at all.
Even with the reports there are no standards on style guide etc.

[bdbits]

One thing you will want to watch out for is licensing. Associated costs may be why you have two environments. So visit with your managment and/or IBM rep before you stand up any additional servers.

There is a very strong trend in BI toward user/customer self-service, which is what it sounds like you have at least some of in your organization. If that is intentional, do not inhibit it by putting a bunch of hoops people have to jump through. It is OK to have guidelines and standards, but if you are going to give users the ability to create their own reports (a good thing), give them some guidance and turn them loose. This can be one of the best things you can do, and you may be pleasantly surprised at how much they can accomplish on their own.

Now if you need a very controlled reporting environment, say for regulatory reasons, that's a different animal. In a case like that, you may have to pull back some ability to author in the production environment, or surround it with some business processes for approvals before a report goes out.

As has already been said, so much depends on your specific organization.

[Sep2013]

That's right.
the focus here is self service Bi and reporting is generally done by an area called business services which is separate to IT.
The only issue is the none of the standrads are followed and I belong to a background where we did not et anyone publish anything in prod without QA. However I am not sure what the right trend is.
For now we have no process in place and I am wishing to propose below:
1) Information request form to be filled whenever a business user request a report from business services team
2) Creating a requirements template for canned/complex reports
3) If its an ad-hoc request, try and enable user to self service BI
4) Have a QA process in place and do not let people create things directly in production public folders, however they are allowed to use my folders
5) Clear the production env by archiving reports that are not used from last few years
6) Create a standard reporting template to be used by all reports
7) Selecting a BI maturity model (gartner or TDWI) and conducting maturing assessments twice a year
8)   Selection of method for showing a ROI of BI  (options available on request);
9)   Selection of measure of success of the BI initiatives besides ROI (options available on request);
10)   In case we wish to track time saving metrics, capturing the total number of hours the BI initiative helped business departments save in the last 12 months;
11)   Capturing turnaround time to deliver new sets of reports/dashboard;
12)   Capturing % of employees who have adopted the BI platform or tools;
13)   Understanding allocation of budget for BI resources & areas of investment (Change Management, Data Marts, External Consulting, Hardware, Internal Employees, Maintenance fees/vendor support, purchasing new tools/apps/software/subscriptions and training);
14)   Percentage of BI initiative resources allocated to tasks/projects from different departments;
15)   Tracking % of time spent in BI activities (options available on request);
16)   Understanding the budget assigned to BI related change management;
17)   Delegated authority to carry out change management in BI practice/program;
18)   Capturing frequency with which change management is performed in BI areas (list of areas available on request)
20)   Workflow in place to merge and prioritise report requests and assign resources accordingly;
21)   Ensure well document procedures are available within the BI space &
22) Keeping track of challenges faced and priority of resolution (list available on request)

Please help me with your advise if what I am going to propose is a good practice or its essential or not :)

[Lynn]

Lots of good ideas in your list. Regarding point 4...

4) Have a QA process in place and do not let people create things directly in production public folders, however they are allowed to use my folders

People are not able to collaborate if they work only in my folders since they can only see their own content. An alternative approach is to set up a permission structure where you have a "published" area and a "shared work area" in public folders.

Authors/teams can create their own folders within the shared area for WIP or ad-hoc needs where they can share/review with others in their team.

Things that are deemed "official" and ready for regular consumption would be moved to the published area and managed by a subset of users who have write access within that area. All others can run content from there but not otherwise affect anything.

Of course you can have a separate area for IT managed reports if that is an additional requirement. The number of different teams and subject areas present in your organisation will help you figure out if this is a necessary or workable option to consider.