My Account | Contact Us   888.537.8135  

MicroStrategy Customer Support

MicroStrategy Healthcheck Diagnostics

 

1. Business Diagnostic

The Business Diagnostic is the first review conducted as part of the Healthcheck program and requires partici-pation from executive sponsors and BI project managers. The Business Diagnostic examines existing reporting and analysis needs and business-related BI goals for the next 12-18 months. We review your planned BI initia-tives and benchmark them against applications that similar organizations are building today using MicroStrategy technology. The information gathered during this diagnostic provides the context for all remaining Healthcheck diagnostics.

 

2. Product Utilization Diagnostic

The Product Utilization Diagnostic provides an objective evaluation of the goals discussed in the Business Diagnostic. Specifically, this diagnostic will provide answers to the following questions:

» What are current BI usage trends and rates of adoption?
» Is the right software available to support planned BI initiatives?
» What is the available capacity? Does a methodology exist to anticipate future needs and plan accordingly?
» What is the utilization of best practice Development, Test, Production, and Failover environments?

Information gathered during the Product Utilization Diagnostic will be used by MicroStrategy to provide recom-mendations for implementing processes to measure usage trends, assess adoption rates, and proactively plan for capacity upgrades. We will review the suitability of current software to meet identified business needs. This review will improve the ability to plan and budget for future hardware and software purchases and avoid poten-tial capacity shortages that could result in unanticipated capital requirements.

 

3. Organizational Skill Diagnostic

Proper staffing and training are critical to successfully deliver any business intelligence initiative. During the Organizational Skill Diagnostic, MicroStrategy reviews the planned staf-fing model for your business intelligence initiatives. We then provide staffing recommenda-tions based on the best practices identified from working with and supporting customers from over 2,000 of the world’s leading organizations. The MicroStrategy Services profes-sionals conduct technical skill assessments and produce customized training plans for each member of the BI development and administration team.

Issues addressed in this Diagnostic include:

» Are teams appropriately staffed for requirements gathering, development, testing, & post-production support?
» Do the individuals in these roles have appropriate training and skills?
» Is each member of the development staff MicroStrategy certified? What additional certifications are needed?

 

4. Methodology & Process Diagnostic

Complementing the Organizational Skill Diagnostic, the Methodology & Process Diagnostic provides a more detailed examination of the existing BI development process. This diagnos-tic examines the activities typically performed by project and program management teams during the implementation of MicroStrategy-based business intelligence systems. The Meth-odology and Process Diagnostic focuses on the use of repeatable processes for develop-ing, testing, deploying, supporting and managing your MicroStrategy applications.

In this diagnostic, MicroStrategy Services professionals assess the following core activities:

»

Development
Evaluates the ability to collect user requirements, scope and phase applications, and develop the projects.
»

Testing
Processes for application testing & management of the test environment are measured against MicroStrategy best practices.
»

Deployment
Assesses the process of moving tested applications into a user-facing production environment. Factors such as task automation, system security, and interaction of functional teams are considered.
»

Support and Management
Management of the application from inception to production is an overriding factor affecting all phases of development. Factors such as scope control, management reporting, and ongoing interaction with the user community are measured against best practice standards.

As an output of this diagnostic, customers receive a scorecard evaluating the strength and completeness of their methodology and specific recommendations to help improve their processes and align themselves with MicroStrategy best practices.

 

5. User Satisfaction Diagnostic

The User Satisfaction Diagnostic provides insight into various qualitative measures of business user satisfaction. This diagnostic qualitatively evaluates ease of use, speed of deployment, quality of support, and availability of training. Performance and usage information are then gathered from system monitoring tools to validate perceptions of the end users and measure the extent to which expectations have been properly set.

The satisfaction metrics are presented on a scorecard and quickly enable MicroStrategy and our customers to review common user satisfaction trouble spots. Common recommendations resulting from the User Satisfaction Diagnostic include modifications to interface and application design, recommendations to revisit application scope and release strategy, and processes to improve user expectation alignment and overall application performance.

 

6. BI Application Diagnostic

The BI Application Diagnostic provides a first-order examination of the architecture, design and performance of key MicroStrategy applications. MicroStrategy Services professionals meet with system architects, application designers and database administrators to diagnose barriers inhibiting the accurate, timely and consistent delivery of information to the end user community.

As a part of the investigative process, MicroStrategy examines a variety of utilization indicators provided by the Intelligence Server’s administrative and monitoring console. Examination of performance and utilization statistics, such as most and least frequently executed reports, most and least frequently used metrics, usage by user and group, report execution time, and data caching efficiency, provide insight into the effectiveness and efficiency of the existing application design. A review of server sizing, server configuration, physical data model design, and data model performance optimization strategies completes the diagnostic process. Through the combined review of the application architecture, business usage, and performance statistics, MicroStrategy will make recommendations for tuning and optimization, enabling customers to maximize the performance and capabilities of their existing infrastructure.

top