1. As part of the company’s project plan preparation, would you use a traditional Waterfall Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) or an Agile methodology, or would you incorporate/mix both? Explain why (your reasoning). Why are Agile development techniques preferable to traditional Waterfall development process for BI applications these days? Answer each question separately please. make it short as possible. I need this by tomorrow morning.

Resources:

• How to be Agile with Your Big Data (Links to an external site.) – This is a great article that describes the difference between the traditional/waterfall and Agile methodologies when implementing business intelligence solutions.
• Chapter 10 from Successful Business Intelligence textbook. – This chapter describes how the Agile methodology is the preferred method for developing business intelligence solutions.

2. The company does not have a formal methodology or process to develop the BI solution from start to finish. Take the BI Project Manager role in Steel Wheels and create a real Project Plan Proposal for Steel Wheels’ BI solution. This project plan should include the following:

• A list of activities needed (from start to finish) to create and maintain the proposed BI solution.
• This list should include all activities in the BI Project Life-Cycle.
• These activities should be listed in the order in which these should be completed based on the BI Project Life-Cycle.
• Describe the purpose of each activity and add fictitious status of the activities and dates (In-Progress/Pending/Completed Status, Date Entered and Date Planned/Actual Completion). Use the BI Project Management Tool to create your BI Project Plan.

Resources:

• BI Project Implementation Life Cycle (Links to an external site.) – This is an article that describes the 5 high-level phases in a business intelligence project life-cycle.
• Key Steps in Business Intelligence Projects (Links to an external site.)This video details the steps to take when implementing a business intelligence solution.
• Why business intelligence projects fail? (Links to an external site.)This is a good video that describes why Business Intelligence projects fail.

3. Describe why Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are a vital tool in the success of a modern organization.

4. EZ Mortgage is a local mortgage processing company that acts as the back-office for a number of local banks and credit unions. Basically, the bank/credit union acts as the customer-facing part of the process (handling the applications, paper collection, etc.), while EZ mortgage is responsible for processing these documents with the actual lenders.

This business has grown quite substantially in the last few years, but recently a couple of EZ Mortgage’s clients have complained about both about the efficiency and the effectiveness of the services provided. EZ Mortgage is missing more deadlines/service level agreements, and the quality of its deliverables have been suspect as of late. Bob Jones, the CEO of EZ Mortgage, needs to correct these problems, but does not know how big the problems are and why they are occurring.

Write a 2-3 page, doubled-spaced paper on how a Six Sigma project could help solve this organization’s process issues. Be sure to include how this project this project should be structured and executed.