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Custom Software Development |
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Although Capstone Consulting was founded in 1998, Capstone consultants have been building enterprise software for a
lot longer, in some cases more than 20 years. In that time, the world has certainly changed, and software has certainly
grown more complex along with it. But the promise of what software can deliver has expanded as well, not just its
complexity. Business Intelligence software is no exception.
Capstone's BI Practice can help you navigate the complexities of custom enterprise software built to meet your
business intelligence and data warehousing needs. Whether it's helping you build a best-of-breed solution by integrating
third party tools into your unique environment or building an end-to-end solution from the ground up, Capstone's
experience and expertise are invaluable resources you can tap to make sure your BI initiative is built on a solid
foundation and that your critical projects are delivered on time and on budget.
Let's break down the components of the Business Intelligence architectural stack, and get behind the
curtain on a few of the most important parts of your BI/DW build-out.
 ETL Technology
For business intelligence systems to function optimally, they require a specialized data architecture, optimized
for the demands made by users of BI. This special data collection is called a Data Warehouse. Data created by
transactional business processes must be extracted from data sources around the enterprise,
transformed into the a new data model, and loaded into the data warehouse. This
process and the tools that support it are typically abbreviated "ETL" for "Extract, Transform, Load".
Capstone can help you create data maps, and then plan, implement, and deploy the ETL tools you need to build
the BI application / components your enterprise needs. We are vendor-neutral, experienced in many technologies,
enabling us to help you select tools and technologies with only one thing in mind: the best solution to your
unique challenges.
 The Data Warehouse
As we mentioned above, the best data warehouses are designed specifically with online analytic processing (OLAP)
in mind. This means special data architecture, special data modeling (a non-normalized form called "multi-dimensional
modeling), special planning, special governance, and much more. Data warehouses, when built right, are just not
easy to build. But the benefits definitely outweigh the cost. Just make sure you have expert help at your disposal.
That's where Capstone comes in. Capstone knows the best practices and industry standards, the pitfalls and potential
of your data warehouse project. Whether it's
mentoring your team,
staffing a data architect on your team, or
overseeing the construction of your data warehouse entirely, Capstone has the tools and talent to make you successful.
For more information about data warehouses and the services Capstone offers, visit our
Enterprise Data Warehousing Services page.
 The OLAP Layer and Data Marts
In order for data to be presented to meet specific user requirements — for reports and dashboards and such — it is
typically packaged into data marts specially designed to meet specific requirements. The data warehouse is a universal
repository; the data mart is a specifically crafted data source leveraged for an exact purpose. Capstone can help
you manage requirements, create reusable data and software modules, and help you avoid the pitfalls of duplicating
and silo'ing data. Capstone can help you establish this critical interface layer between the data warehouse and the
presentation components which make it accessible to your users.
The BI Presentation Layer
The top of the BI architectural stack is the part that everyone sees and which gets the most press: the presentation
layer. Comprised of various types of components ranging from widgets to reports, dashboards to scorecards, even
totally custom desktop applications, the presentation layer is the window through which the end user accesses BI.
There are literally dozens of vendors who offer fantastic tools to build BI presentation components. Capstone has
experience with many of them. We can help you put in real business query tools (sometimes called
"ad-hoc querying", the subject of an article in the September 2008
edition of Capstone's eNewsletter) or put together a balanced scorecard initiative. If you need an experienced
application architect to help you with your reporting requirements, just let us know. Whatever your needs in building
BI applications or components, Capstone has the experience and expertise to help you make your project successful.
Capstone has been building software for a really long time. We remember the days when waterfall methodologies were
in and, in some cases, even worked — when the software was straightforward enough. Perhaps unfortunately, those days
are behind us. In the modern world, and especially in a BI environment, the big bang approach to software development
is all but doomed to failure before the project even gets underway.
It has been Capstone's experience time and time again that taking an iterative, incremental approach to building
software is by far the best plan to maximize the probability of successful deliver — on time and on budget. In fact,
we recommend an iterative approach to solving almost all complex problems. Not only does this approach permit risk to
be addressed up front and mitigated throughout the project, but it creates an environment in which the business sees
concrete value from IT's efforts early and continually. And as expensive as BI can be, this is really the only way
to go.
RUP, Agile, and the Kimball Lifecycle
Capstone leverages three main schools of thought when managing a software development project in the BI space: RUP,
Agile, and the Kimball Lifecycle. The Rational Unified Process (or "RUP") is a phased, iterative approach to software
development which has been proven effective over many years. RUP is in fact a methodology framework which Capstone
has customized — leveraging Agile and other principals — to create a light-weight, highly effective, repeatable,
iterative and incremental process for successfully delivering software projects.
Where appropriate — not always the case with Business Intelligence projects — Capstone consultants are also strong
Agile practitioners. (Read more about Capstone's Agile Project Management practice.) Particularly in the BI
world, we tend to leverage a number of Agile principles and borrow heavily from Scrum, not always finding that strict
 
adherance to either is the best practice for our customers.
Capstone's BI team are is a big believer in the Kimball Group's philosophies in developing data warehouses. The
Kimball Lifecycle Methodology, for example, is an extremely effective, time-tested approach to assembling data warehouse
data. Capstone tends, as Kimball recommends, to gather reporting requirements, then work forward from the business
process creating the data necessary to generate those reports to build the BI system the customer needs. We've found
Kimball's approach to have the fewest pitfalls and highest rate of success, so we eagerly pass those best practices
along to our customers.
There are two primary ways Capstone can assist you in building your business intelligence software.
Full-lifecycle Software Development
First, and this is really our sweet spot, if you
need an application built, let us make that happen. Whether you need a scorecard, a dashboard, a specific set of reports, new widgets / components for
your customer portal, integration between systems, or a totally custom piece of proprietary software that is destined to become the backbone of your
competitive advantage, Capstone can build it for you from start to finish. We have the skills, experience, and expertise to staff the project from end
to end: gathering requirements, architecting and designing the system, helping you with governance and data architecture/analysis, writing the code,
testing, and overseeing transition to production. We can work on site at your office or in our development center. Either way, you know you will have
a quality product — built on industry best practices and decades of experience — when we've finished.
And don't worry about Capstone's team locking ourselves in a room for years until your solution is fully baked. We are not
"big bang software people", remember! Capstone's software development approach will deliver value you can use early and often.
We work in short sprints, striving for 30 day release cycles if possible, so that the business is never wondering for long what
the end product will look like ... and to ensure that changing course is a straightforward task.
Staff Augmentation
Secondly, we can play a key role on your project. Have most of the brainpower (and horsepower) you need on your own IT staff, but need an
architect, an Agile PM, or a couple extra developers to round out the team and fill critical gaps in skill set? We can help. Capstone will
augment your team with an experienced architect, developer, or project manager. Any of these resources bring invaluable knowledge
and experience to your team, and serve as mentors along the way — transferring knowledge to your staff as they go about the everyday tasks
of helping to make your project successful.
Oh, and need someone to support the project after the first major deployment is completed?
Check out Capstone's Managed Software Services offering.
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