Business Intelligence: Socializing Team-Based Decision Making

For many of us, making decisions is a challenge; for others, it can be torture. Despite nearly half a century of work in decision support and business intelligence (BI), many businesses’ decisions look vaguely dysfunctional. If we examine how most organizations really make important and innovative decisions, we see that most are made by teams (permanent or transitory) of people rather than by individuals. It’s high time we designed an effective approach to true decision-making support—what we might call innovative team-based decision making. This article presents a new model we call iSight that maps the path from the information cues that signal change is required, through the team interactions and implementation, and on to measurable and repeatable innovation. The key to this progression lies in informal information—the conversations and meetings, messages, and e-mails that record the actual path of decision making but which are largely lost today. Capturing and using this informal information is increasingly possible as we move to a world where nearly all information is digital. Our iSight model provides the first comprehensive framework in which team-based decision making can be understood, designed into software solutions, and implemented in highly innovative and forward-looking organizations. Barry Devlin, Ph.D., is a founder of the data warehousing industry and among the foremost worldwide authorities on business intelligence and the emerging field of business insight. He is a widely respected consultant, lecturer, and author of the seminal book Data Warehouse: From Architecture to Implementation. He is founder and principal of 9sight Consulting (www.9sight.com).