The Impact of Agility Requirements on Business Intelligence Architectures

Business Intelligence (BI) promises a coordinated and integrated approach to management support. This goal, however, is constantly challenged by de-central and isolated systems that emerge on the side of the user departments and that seriously affect the overall effectiveness of BI. This contribution explores how requirements for "agility" might explain the situation and what measures can be taken on the architecture side to deal with them. After discussing the concept of agility, it is argued that some degree of de-centrality might be unavoidable in turbulent business environment due to the very nature of BI. In a series of case studies it is explored how the situation can be dealt with in a systematic manner. The results show that agility requirements can be effectively confined to areas more exposed to turbulence as long as the architecture is designed in a pertinent way -- and if it is supported by suitable organizational measures.