If the business is fully engaged in the process, as they tend to be in true agile implementations, then I think it is safe to let that knowledge stay on the business side for the most part, the the team does need to understand the basic fundamentals of the business to understand what the business it talking about in their design sessions. In companies that take the “Hey IT, go build me a data warehouse so I can see our financials and I’ll talk to you in 9 months” approach there has to be a high level of business understanding within the BI team, and even then you run a very high risk of failing because despite all the business knowledge in the world you can’t accurately guess what the business wants to see and how they want to see it. The important thing to do for BI teams is be open to learn as much as you can about the business, and that is a continuous process. The more the BI team knows about the business the better the results will be, but the bottom line is that the business has to be involved regularly in the process or your results will be mixed.

Level of experience is certainly something that can vary in a BI team. What are your thoughts about technical acumen vs. business acumen. Does a robust understanding of the business belong inside of a BI team or should the team be limited to the technology folks? Curious to hear your perspective.