Katabatic Business Intelligence: Quickly Adapting to the Winds of Change (Keynote)

Presentation Summary

Keynote Speaker Ken Collier

Ken got excited about agile development in 2003 and was one of the first to start combining agile methods with data warehousing, business intelligence, and analytics. These disciplines present a unique set of challenges to the incremental/evolutionary style of agile development. Ken has successfully adapted agile techniques to data warehousing and business intelligence to create the Agile Analytics style. He continues to refine these ideas as a technical lead and project manager on several Agile DW/BI project teams. Ken also frequently trains data warehousing and business intelligence teams in Agile Analytics, giving him the opportunity to exercise this approach with various technologies, team dynamics, and industry domains. With over two decades in advanced computing and technology, Ken has experienced many of the trends that come and go in our field, as well as the ones that truly transform the state of our practices. With an M.S. and Ph.D. in computer science engineering, Ken is formally trained in software engineering, data management, and machine learning. He loves challenging problems in the areas of systems architecture and design; systems/software development lifecycles; project leadership; data warehousing; business intelligence; and advanced analytics. Ken loves helping organizations adopt and tailor effective approaches and solutions that might not otherwise be apparent. He combines deep technical foundation with sound business acumen to help bridge the gaps that often exist between technical and business professionals. Ken has had the privilege of working as a software engineer for a large technology company. He has spent several years as a tenured professor of computer science engineering. He has directed the data warehousing and business intelligence solutions group for a major consulting firm. And, most recently, focuses on enabling organizational agility for his client companies, including agile software engineering; agile analytics; and agile management and leadership. Ken has written extensively about Agile Data Warehousing and BI, and his book entitled, “Agile Analytics: A Value-driven Approach to Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing”, will be on bookshelves in early 2011.