The classic system development lifecycle (SDLC) model for requirements gathering places an emphasis on formal interviews with subject matter experts who are in complete and conscious command of their needs. This approach does not work well in performance management projects. The often incomplete, flawed and mischaracterised requirements gathered via this method are a leading cause of projects that fail – usually from neglect – in production, as business analysts discover that the analytical system they expected to meet their every need meets few, or none, of those needs. In short, the time taken to deliver and the “ahh, now I see what you can do, this is what I’d like you to do” makes the traditional SDLC approach redundant.

For this reason, we have adopted the data warehouse lifecycle (DWLC) model, which is fundamentally as described in the diagram below:

This methodology allows us to rapidly assess your needs, create a design and build a prototype and show it to you before we then deploy it. This gives you the opportunity to then say “now I know what you can do, this is what I’d like you to do” as seeing what can be done is quite often a very powerful method of getting the best result. The circle then is completed by the operation and enhancement of the solution and of course it is never fully complete as you will always be identifying new areas where your performance management solution can be improved.