A Methodology for Social BI

Social BI (SBI) is the emerging discipline that aims at combining corporate data with textual user-generated content (UGC) to let decision-makers analyze their business based on the trends perceived from the environment. Despite the increasing diffusion of SBI applications, no specific and organic design methodology is available yet. In this paper we propose an iterative methodology for designing and maintaining SBI applications that reorganizes the activities and tasks normally carried out by practitioners. Effective support to quick maintenance iterations is a key feature in this context due to the huge dynamism of the UGC and to the pressing need of immediately perceiving and timely reacting to changes in the environment. The paper is completed by two case studies of real SBI projects, related to Italian politics and to the consumer goods area respectively, aimed at proving that the adoption of a structured methodology positively impacts on the project success.