eazyBI Project Implementation: Timeline and Risks

Success and failure are sensitive topics. We don’t always like to talk about it, but it is where the most useful lessons are.

As a Business Analyst, I have been working with eazyBI and flex.bi worldwide for the last ten years, implementing the reporting solutions worldwide. We are certified partners, and as flex.bi, we work on mixed-data eazyBI projects, where Jira is only one of the many other data sources. At eazyBI Community Days 2026, I shared what I have learned about these projects’ success, why they fail, and what we can actually influence.

How Does Business Analysis Differ from the Art of Performing Magic?

In daily life, you interview business users, and then you are expected to perform magic. What they want is a very precise result in an almost completely uncertain situation. I am exaggerating a little, but not much — we work in a lot of unpredictability, and that can be frustrating.

Most of us know the feeling of being lost in a project and its calculations. You do everything right, the numbers still aren’t what you expected. And you realize some other metrics are involved. You sit with your technical team and think, "We can’t solve this." And then, step by step, digging into the pile, you start getting the little bits and pieces that lead to the result.

There is also the opposite feeling — being lost in your own ideas. eazyBI and other analytics platforms have so many possibilities. Technically, everything is possible: so many charts, so many visualizations. But what should we measure? Where do we start? No technical tool gives a result without a clear vision of what we want to achieve.

What Makes eazyBI Projects Specific?

The scope is largely unknown. If you compare the beginning and outcome of a project, in most cases the scope has changed by 80% or more. There is nothing wrong with the team involved, they just can’t know what they don’t know yet. When customers start working with eazyBI, they see the possibilities and get new ideas. It is perfectly normal to change the scope.

There is a lot of creativity involved, on both sides. We have to be creative as consultants, and the people who use eazyBI in the company have to be creative as well. Creativity is not something you can do constantly, day by day. It takes a lot of mental resources. That is why there can be small gaps in a project, and that is normal.

There are a lot of choices. Which charts, which views, how to present it, how to divide the users. When many things are possible, we get a kind of paradox of choice, which can be confusing.

Every Project Is a Change

To have a successful project, we must make the people who are part of it successful. So let’s look at project success from the perspective of the humans involved.

Every project is basically a change. Change means losing something that was there before and moving to something new. Imagine the path you always take to work — you wake up one morning, and it isn’t there anymore. Sometimes you are curious, sometimes not too interested, sometimes just mad, and you have to adapt. Implementing any project is, most of the time, working with change management in people’s minds, and in your own mind too.

Common Reactions to Change

Action. People immediately start acting, working, and moving toward the goal. It can be positive, and sometimes negative. A very technical person who starts building things before management has decided what to do is also a risk. But action means being part of it, and it is easy to manage within a project.

Minimizing. Some people try to avoid changes as much as possible. Maybe they don’t feel secure, maybe there is already too much pressure on them at work. That is manageable: figure it out and work with everyone involved so more resources are provided.

Resistance. “I don’t like the change. I really liked the previous way, and I’m not planning to do it in a new way.” Mostly this is a question of personality. Some people are not drawn to change. It can also be a value or management issue: there is no common understanding of why the company is implementing eazyBI and what the benefits are.

Distance. People who participate but say, "You do your thing, I’ll watch." They are not saying "no" or "yes". You can work with them and show them the benefits, and then they get involved.

Working with all these reactions is very important, because that is where success hides. Releasing the old and getting the new is an emotional process, even when the new is bright and shiny, especially in a world where we have to accept so many new things every single day. People already carry some resistance, so we have to be caring and gentle.

When Everything Technical Is Right, and It Still Doesn’t Work

I have had projects where everything technically is good. The reports are good, the process is good. But it just doesn’t work.

Digging deeper, the reason usually hides behind perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use. The technology acceptance model is worth looking up here. If people are not convinced that the new way will be easier, they will not jump in. We don’t want to waste our energy, and it can be wasted very easily. Nothing is wrong with the solution; the reason is personal.

The decision about whether a project will succeed is made in its hardest part, at the bottom of the curve. That is where you have to support your team the most, because innovation only comes once we are out of that little hole where everybody is angry. The Franklin Covey change model describes each stage of it in detail.

What to Do in the Preparation Stage

• Clarify whether the project is essential for the company.
• Diagnose the reactions and risks described above to understand what the temperature is.
• Prepare people for the hard times. Don’t say it is going to be easy, it is always hard.
• Define the scope, but stay flexible. Avoid very fixed budgets and fixed methodologies.
• Let people talk about their risks and insecurities. Then they are more free to accept the technology.

Top Five Risk Factors Implementing eazyBI

A couple of years ago, I analyzed 76 projects worldwide. These five factors showed up in the projects with the lowest acceptance rates.

1. No management blessing. Sooner or later you end up in a corner with too little budget or resources, with other priorities taking over. There must be management acceptance for the project.
2. More than one analytics tool. Nowadays it is normal to have several reporting tools, but it is tricky when someone in the company runs a totally different universe, like another analytics solution they want to stay with.
3. Not enough resources or budget. You can feel this at the very beginning: not enough people, no dedicated person for testing.
4. A bad moment for the company. Other focuses, changes in management or the industry, availability of the right people at the moment — it all adds up.
5. A lack of training, or simply not showing people what you have built.

All of these are manageable except one: the company cycle. It is like having a teenager, you tell them all the good things you know, and it just doesn’t work because they are not ready yet. Sometimes projects fail simply because the company is not ready at that particular time. Companies grow at their own pace; some customers come back several times.

Mundane Solutions for Making Magic Happen

Support. We can hold customers' hands and support them, including in non-technical discussions that may sound obvious to eazyBI experts but are important to them.

Guidance. We can be precise and guide through the eazyBI world. We can build structures and schemas that explain how the data is connected. We keep the expertise and help people navigate their own data jungle, not asking why the data is bad, but helping to fix it.

Methodology. We can choose the right methodology. Not everybody is ready for agile, because not every business knows what agile is. The spiral model and iterative approaches work well in unknown circumstances. Waterfall is not something I would recommend.

Risk assessment. And we can neutralize the risk factors we diagnosed. If there is no management blessing, talk to the stakeholders and meet them, because in two years the project will not be alive without them.

Takeaways After Implementing eazyBI Projects for 10 Years

• Some projects will fail, and there is nothing you can do about it.
• Most projects need more time and are more complex than they look at the beginning, because along the way everyone discovers how many opportunities there are.
• Planning is the key. It helps you avoid many unwanted situations in the middle and at the end.
• There can never be too much support for the end users.

If you want to learn success, study failure. That is where the answers are.

Watch the full presentation recording here.