What is a Reporting Solution?
There are three distinct levels of deliverables when it comes to reporting.
1. Reporting Solution
A Reporting Solution is what results from the configuration and adjustment of existing tools and components in order to deliver one or more reports to users. It usually involves an automation process of some kind, but doesn't normally require program code to be written.
You might use tools like Crystal Reports, Microsoft Excel or Microsoft Access to design the reports and save your work to a server or repository, from where the users/customers open them for example, workbook and refresh their data to see the latest picture.
2. Development Project
A Reporting Solution becomes a Development Project round about the point where program code needs to be written. As soon as this threshold is crossed, a deeper level of technical expertise is often required, but more importantly, project scope is increased significantly. This means that the time to complete the project — and the risks that it will fail — increase. Challenges such as where the source code will be stored, supported and secured arise. Because of the open-ended nature of program code, even relatively high-level languages like Visual Basic bring a new kind of risk to the project when they are introduced. Still, it is often necessary to embark upon a Development Project when challenges are complex enough to warrant it.
3. Product Development
From the outside, Product Development is the process of delivering a solution, but one that can be used by a wider audience than just the few people with whom a development team might have contact. The programmers writing program code for the Crystal Reports shrink-wrapped product, for example, will never get to meet the Crystal Reports users who work for Acme Ltd in Bangalore, India. But still, the product must function in a way that serves that broader audience.
Product Development requires not only a lot of program code to be written, but a whole new level of Quality Assurance, Product Management, version management, engineering discipline, and so on, before the process can deliver a product to the world.
What does each cost?
A Reporting Solution might cost "in the five digits", so perhaps in the range of $10k - $100k. A Development Project might cost ten times that. Delivering a product (in terms of Product development described here) might be an order of magnitude more costly still.
As a reporting task moves from one level up to the next, significantly more time is usually also required. To deliver, for example, an OCX control to display charts in a browser for the Bank of America employees, might take several months. A fairly 'hard core' computer programmer would be required and source code would have to be protected against loss. In the end, the task is a Development Project and is far more complex than a Reporting Solution, as more skills and more technical moving parts are involved.
What sometimes happens is, the project team embarks upon what is essentially a Development Project, but they do so with the tool set, time frame expectations and resources appropriate to a Reporting Solution. So too are Product Development projects embarked upon with insufficient resources.
When you are planning your reporting solution, consider the level of project for which you are willing to expend resources.
Is it a Reporting Solution, a Development Project or is it Product Development? Knowing which one it is from the outset is critical.
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