Agile Data Warehouse Design & Dimensional Modeling

Agile Data Warehouse Design covers step-by-step techniques for capturing data warehousing/business intelligence (DW/BI) requirements and turning them into high performance dimensional models in the most direct way: by modelstorming (data modeling + brainstorming) with BI stakeholders.

Agile techniques emphasise the early and frequent delivery of working software, stakeholder collaboration, responsiveness to change and waste elimination. They have revolutionised application development and are increasingly being adopted by DW/BI teams. This course provides practical tools and techniques for applying agility to the design of database schemas – the earliest needed and most important working software for BI.

The course contrasts agile and non-agile DW/BI development and highlights the inherent failings of traditional BI requirements analysis and data modeling. Via class room sessions and team exercises attendees will discover how modelstorming (modeling + brainstorming) data requirements directly with BI stakeholders overcomes these limitations.

The course teaches BEAM (Business Event Analysis & Modeling), an agile approach to dimensional modeling, for improving communication between data designers, BI stakeholders and the whole DW/BI development team. BEAM provides tools and techniques that will encourage designers and developers to set aside their keyboards and entity relationship based tools and model interactively with their business stakeholders and colleagues. The result is everyone thinks dimensionally from the initial high level data requirements right down to detailed datasets. Developers understand how to efficiently implement dimensional modeling solutions. Business stakeholders feel ownership of the models they co-create and can already imagine how they will use them to answer their business questions.

BEAM helps close the gap between the business users’ data requirements and database design. It allows groups of business and IT professionals to model data collaboratively to not only gather and prioritize data requirements but create a shared understanding of data analytics opportunities and design more flexible BI solutions.

Join Lawrence Corr, author of the DW/BI bestseller Agile Data Warehouse Design for a lively three-day collaborative dimensional modeling course covering the latest agile techniques for systematically gathering Business Intelligence (BI) requirements and designing effective DW/BI systems.

Learning objectives

You will learn how to:

• Understand the requirements and challenges of DW/BI design in a “Big Data” world
• Explain the impact of agile practices on DW/BI design
• Agile dimensional modeling using Business Event Analysis & Modeling (BEAM)
• Run modelstorming sessions: do data modeling that is quicker, more inclusive, more productive, and quite frankly more fun!
• Model BI requirements with stakeholders using business-friendly tools and techniques
• Model data requirements collaboratively using visual thinking and storytelling
• Tell dimensional data stories using the 7Ws (who, what, when, where, how many, why and how)
• Use narrative, visual thinking, 7Ws and lots of Post-it ™ notes to get everyone thinking more clearly about data requirements and creating better data models
• Help business stakeholders develop powerful mental maps for exploring their data with modern BI tools
• Model by example not abstraction; using data story themes, not crow’s feet, to describe detail
• Storyboard the data warehouse to discover conformed dimensions and plan iterative development
• Rapidly translate BI data requirements into efficient, flexible data warehouse and data mart designs
• Plan, design and develop BI solutions incrementally
• Solve common BI performance and usability problems with proven dimensional design patterns.

Who Should Attend

• Business and IT professionals who want to jointly develop better analytical data solutions sooner
• Business analysts, scrum masters, data modelers/architects, DBAs and application developers new to DW/BI, will benefit from the solid grounding in dimensional modeling.
• Data scientists and engineers will learn valuable techniques for designing feature rich datasets.
• Experienced DW/BI professionals will find the course updates their hard-earned industry knowledge with fresh ideas on agile modeling, dimensional design patterns and business model alignment.
• Data Vault practitioners will appreciate BEAM’s systematic approach for designing query-friendly dimensional data marts and unlocking business value.

You receive a free copy of the book Agile Data Warehouse Design by Lawrence Corr.