I’m always surprised when a new client doesn’t have a charter that describes the mission and strategy of the business intelligence (BI) and analytics program. A charter defines a BI program’s direction and goals and how it plans to achieve them. It unifies team members behind a stretch vision and communicates to the outside world what the program is about.

Many BI and analytics leaders don’t allocate the time to create or update a charter. It’s easy to see why—there are always more pressing concerns to deal with and plenty of fires to put out. It seems impractical to allocate a few days of the team's time to craft a grand vision for the program. When you’re up to your ears in alligators, all you care about is swimming to shore.

However, without a charter, a BI team can’t effectively prioritize its work—it tries to be all things to all people. Consequently, it gets pulled in many directions and major projects get delayed. Team members work harder and longer than ever, but never seem to accomplish anything. User adoption declines and team morale plummets.

Without a charter, a BI team can’t effectively prioritize its work...Team members work harder and longer than ever, but never seem to accomplish anything.

A worse consequence is that the business doesn’t see BI as a critical program that manages an important company asset. Its voice is never heard during strategic planning and operational review meetings. Executives rarely allocate time to focus on BI and data issues and don’t free up key staff members to work with the BI team. During budget season, the BI team is always asked to do more with less, and is often a target of outsourcing or offshoring discussions.

Charter vs Plan

The best BI teams run like a business. (See figure 1.) At the heart of any business or BI program is both a charter and a strategic plan. Although different, these artifacts are highly complementary, and often get rolled into the same document. Here is a quick definition of the two:

• A charter defines the mission, vision, values, and guiding principles of a program. It defines the timeless, indelible aspects of the program. As such, the charter rarely changes.
   
• A strategic plan describes how the BI team plans to achieve the mission and vision during the next two to three years. It defines concrete goals the BI team wants to achieve, an organizational and technical plan to achieve the goals, and a roadmap to implement the plan.

Figure 1. The Best BI Programs Run as a Business -- Does Yours? 

Good BI programs have all the elements of a stand-alone business. 

A charter should last for five to 10 years—it’s the cornerstone of a program. In contrast, a strategic plan should be refreshed every two or three years, depending on the rate of internal organizational change and the pace of technology innovation. The strategic plan fleshes out the charter with concrete steps designed to achieve the vision and mission. It always references the charter.

Components

A good charter is concise but thorough. It contains enough information so that anyone inside or outside the team can quickly grasp what the team is about, where it’s headed, and how it plans to get there.

There are many components to a charter. BI leaders need to decide which components to include in a charter and how much detail to provide about each one.

Potential Components in a Charter/Plan

• Mission, vision, values
• Goals and guiding principles
• Roadmap. Two- to three-year plan to achieve goals 
• Success criteria. How the BI team and the business measures the effectiveness of the BI team.
• Stakeholders. People who oversee, partner with, or are served by the BI team.
• Organization model. How the BI team is structured and governed.
• Business engagement model. How the BI team interfaces with business users.
• Development processes. How the BI team builds, tests, and deploys applications.
• Partnerships. Key partners and the nature of the partnership.
• Data architecture. High-level depiction and description of how data flows from sources to targets and the platforms that support them.
• Technical architecture. Definition of the tools and standards used to support the data architecture.
• Training and Support. Formal and informal training, including peer-based and online forums, as well as help desks, office hours, labs, Webcasts, etc.
• Marketing plan. Branding, communications, awareness, and education plans, including contests, internal events, and publicity.
• Education and support. Plans to
• Change management plan. High-level description of the plan to improve user adoption and minimize resistance.

Graphical Model. It’s also a good idea to create a graphic representation of the strategic plan that communicates the key elements of the BI program in an easy-to-digest manner. The graphic becomes an element in all presentations and reports that describe the BI program.

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• PsyOps Part 2: Winning the Hearts and Minds of Business Users

How to Create a Charter and Plan

A charter is a group effort. It requires contribution from every team member as well as sponsors and key stakeholders. There must buy-in up and down the organizational hierarchy for a charter to take root and become part of the daily fabric of how a BI team works.

A BI strategy is a bit different. A BI director often forms it with input from key team members. The BI director presents the strategy to a cross-functional working group of analytics managers (i.e. BI Council) for review and refinement. Finally, the director presents the plan to an executive committee for approval and funding.

Typically, a charter can be developed in two workshops over the course of two or three weeks. The BI leader and an outside facilitator craft a strawman proposal that the team reviews and refines. The strawman, which is usually based on a prior assessment or survey, expedites the process and keeps the team on track. A survey ensures that everyone’s voice is heard and primes individuals to start thinking strategically ahead of the initial workshop.

Eckerson Group helps many organizations develop strategic plans and charters. If you would like more information, please contact Wayne Eckerson at [email protected].