March 2, 2009
Ideas for BI POCs
Kevin Spurway of Altosoft has a post up offering his suggestions on how to do business intelligence POCs (Proofs-of-Concept). Among the best ideas in his post are:
- Do POCs.
- Don’t let the vendors prepare the details of the POCs in advance.
- Get your hands on the actual SQL generated in the queries.
- Try to understand the actual development and deployment processes.
The post’s worst, or at least most self-serving, idea is:
- Restrict POCs to single-day toy projects.
Of course, he didn’t phrase it exactly that way, but that was the gist.
Actually, the more realistically your POC models:
- Full query workloads and throughput
- Repositories jammed full with a lot of messy detail
the more reliable it will be.
Categories: Analytic technologies, Benchmarks and POCs, Business intelligence, Buying processes
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One Response to “Ideas for BI POCs”
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Thanks for the comments. I think we’re agreed on the value of POCs.
My intent wasn’t to suggest that organizations limit themselves to one day “toy” POCs. Ultimately, there’s no point in running a POC if the results don’t help establish that vendor’s ability to deliver on a broader project. So it’s essential that the POC not be a toy, whether it takes a day or a few weeks.
Here’s what I wrote:
“Operate on a timeline. At Altosoft, we typically do a one day POC. Sometimes two. Other vendors probably require more time. Ask your vendor how much time they need, negotiate this with them up front, and hold them to completing the POC in the requisite time frame!”
My point is that setting some kind of a structured timeline is important. If a vendor can’t deliver a POC in the time they promise, then, in my opinion, that should be a big red flag for a full scale project.
That being said, we take a lot of pride in the productivity of our solutions compared to other options out there, and that obviously came through in my post. I don’t think any company that has experienced a one or two day POC with Altosoft would consider the results to be trivial. Of course, some customers want to do even more, and naturally we are happy to accommodate that as well.