UAT and how IT works

From Find out how “IT” works.

In this case, “IT” is not limited to information technology, but whatever “it” is – the requirements process, the project management process, the testing process, etc. The better you as a customer understand “it,” the more effective you will be in making “it” work for you.

Donna Corrigan from CoBank suggests: “When defining requirements, stay focused on value-added business requirements, not technology. Understand the user acceptance testing (UAT) schedule early on, and clear the calendars of UAT business staff during the UAT period.”

Bill Yock from The University of Washington says: "The most important thing a customer of a BI project should insist on is "World Class" training. Incorporate training on both the meaning of the data and the use of the business intelligence tools. Many BI projects invest too much in the ‘back room’ data loading and integration of warehouses and marts, and not enough in the ‘front door’ … educating and informing users on how to interpret, analyze and understand their information. One of our mission statements was ‘Free the Data.’ Unfortunately, once the data was free, nobody understood it. This led to lack of confidence in the ‘numbers’ and adoption of the BI tool hit a brick wall."

To be a good BI customer, figure out what “it” is and how you can proactively influence and invest time in requirements, data models, prioritization, governance, testing, training, etc. Don’t allow yourself to be so dependent that you passively sit back and wait for “IT” to make everything happen.