With the best will in the world it is a sad fact that many BI projects fail. On the other hand most IT projects disappoint as they fail in  at least one of three critical success factors

To be delivered on time, within budget and to specification.

The good news is that if you take care to avoid these five typical mistakes you greatly increase the likelihood of success:-

  • Believing one-size fits-all.
  • Giving users tools incompatible with their job
  • Inadequate data governance
  • Unclear roles & responsibilities
  • Lack of training 

One other mistake I typically see:-

Trying to bite off too much in one go. 

An ISV that builds a complex analytics layer in its product that is late to market, too complex and irrelevant to user's priorities

An enterprise that does not ask the users across the organisation what would make the biggest difference to their  working lives.