We advise you to have a brief project scope template ready. This document will capture the requirements in an overview.
This document can then become a base for the detailed requirement gathering exercise. The document should capture the essence of the project, the objectives, Key Performance Indicators (KPI), and the input sources. This document also helps you to get a rough idea about the complexity of the project, the time lines involved, and what kinds of developers will be needed to execute the project.
A template similar to the one that follows can be considered:
Project Name: Give a name to the project.
Version History:
The table consists of the following details:
| Version | Description | Created by | Date | Approved by |
| 1.0 | Initial Project Brief Document | <your name> | 01-June-2017 | <Approver name> |
| 1.1 |
- Project objectives: Mention the project's objectives (what the organization wants to achieve from the project):
- Increase revenue by 10 percent by increasing cross-sell and up-sell opportunities
- Reduce inventory costs by 20 percent by optimizing inventory levels
- References: Give references on the interactions carried out:
- Meetings held on 21 May 2017 in London with head of finance
- Sample reports sent to us on 23 May 2017
- Brief organization background: Mention a few lines about the company, its nature of business, and any other important details
- Project purpose: This section can be used to describe the need for the BI project
- Project benefits: List the benefits the organization will get from implementation of the BI project:
- Reduce reporting time from 10 days to near real time
- Move to online reviews
- Data sources: Mention the data points from where data will be extracted for the dashboards:
- Budgets and quota to be picked from Master.xls
- Transaction data to be picked from SAP ERP
- Application brief: Mention the KPI which needs to be captured:
- Sales analysis: value and volume
- Revenue/Profitability by brand/product
- Production cycle times
- Application security: Mention about security aspects in brief:
- Application to be published in Finance stream
- Access based on product(s) handled
- No export of data rights to anyone
- Project success criteria: Define the parameters which will count towards the success of the project:
- Elimination of manual reporting
- High adoption
- Online reviews