Modernization guide
How to assess BI modernization readiness
A modernization program needs an agreed problem, a reliable inventory, and people who can accept the result. Before choosing a target platform or a delivery date, use these questions to identify what is known and what still needs discovery. The output should be a short readiness brief that a business owner and a platform owner can both review.
1. Define the outcome in business terms
Identify the decisions your reporting supports and what is making delivery difficult. A platform retirement, conflicting metric definitions, repeated manual fixes, and slow report development are different problems. Write the primary goal as an observable change, such as a reviewed set of shared measures or a supported reporting path after a legacy system closes.
Establish a baseline before promising an improvement. Record the current reporting scope, release process, and known pain points. Choose a few measures the team can collect consistently instead of assuming a universal reduction in time or cost.
2. Inventory assets and their dependencies
An asset list is a starting point, not a complete migration plan. Include source systems, shared models, calculations, scheduled delivery, and downstream consumers. Inspect representative reports to find hidden dependencies that a folder-level count can miss.
CoDash’s analysis workflows expose source metadata and dependencies for review. Combine that technical view with business context supplied by your team. Flag missing access or missing source artifacts early, because those gaps affect what can be assessed.
- Source platforms and versions are recorded.
- Required exports or connections are available.
- Shared models and important dependencies are identified.
- Inventory gaps have an owner and a discovery action.
3. Establish ownership and rationalization criteria
Give each reporting area an owner who can explain why it exists and what it must preserve. Usage evidence can help prioritize the review, but a rarely used report may still support a critical quarterly or annual process. Verify those exceptions before proposing retirement.
Agree the criteria for keeping, merging, archiving, rebuilding, or migrating an asset. Similarity alone does not establish duplication. Record differences in audiences, filters, metric definitions, and access requirements before selecting a canonical report.
4. Confirm the target operating model
Review the target platform, data connectivity, identity, publishing permissions, and deployment responsibilities with your platform team. If a client-cloud deployment is required, include network boundaries and infrastructure ownership in the discussion. Confirm the source-to-target migration path and its deliverables before planning the wider program.
Decide who validates calculations, who approves business behavior, and who supports the release. These roles can belong to different teams; a readiness brief should make those handoffs explicit.
5. Choose a representative first wave
Select a bounded reporting area that exercises meaningful complexity without depending on the whole estate. Include at least one important calculation, data relationship, filter, and publishing requirement. A visually simple report with unusually complex logic can be a more useful sample than a large dashboard of straightforward measures.
Document conversion exceptions, validation effort, review turnaround, and missing source context. Expand when those findings support a realistic plan. A ready program has enough evidence to begin a defined scope, even if the wider estate still contains unknowns.