Ken Collier

Ken Collier is the former director of Cutter's Data Analytics & Digital Technologies practice. He is a leader in combining agile methods with data warehousing (DW), business intelligence (BI), and advanced analytics -- disciplines that present a unique set of challenges to the incremental/evolutionary style of agile development. Mr. Collier has successfully adapted agile techniques to DW/BI 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. Mr. Collier also frequently trains DW/BI teams in Agile Analytics, giving him the opportunity to exercise this approach with various technologies, team dynamics, and industry domains.

With more than two decades in advanced computing and technology, Mr. Collier has experienced many of the trends that come and go in the field, as well as the ones that truly transform the state of practice. He embraces challenging problems in the areas of systems architecture and design, systems/software development lifecycles, project leadership, DW/BI, and advanced analytics. Mr. Collier also loves helping organizations adopt and tailor effective approaches and solutions that might not otherwise be apparent. He combines a deep technical foundation with sound business acumen to help bridge the gaps that often exist between technical and business professionals.

Mr. Collier 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. Mr. Collier has also directed the DW/BI solutions group for a major consulting firm. Most recently, he has worked on enabling organizational agility for client companies, including agile software engineering, agile analytics, and agile management and leadership. Mr. Collier has written extensively about agile DW/BI and is the author of Agile Analytics: A Value-Driven Approach to Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing. With an MS and PhD in computer science engineering, he is formally trained in software engineering, data management, and machine learning.