If you are in charge of a business intelligence project, your job is not to implement software. It is not to “keep the business happy”. It is to use your expertise to help the company transform the way it does business. BI is useless unless something changes as a result of the data that you’re providing.
It’s not about “working with the business”. You should assume that the business people are there to help you in your transformation mission.
That’s probably not what you’ve been asked to do. The business people, justifiably, think it’s their job to transform the business.
But having the mind-set that you are ultimately responsible for the success or failure of the system will help the project stay on track. It will encourage you to understand the business needs, ask the right questions, and make the right tradeoffs.
I believe that leading a BI project has the potential to bring more value than any other job in the organization today, and requires a breathtakingly wide range of skills, from deep technical knowledge, to extreme project management, to advanced diplomacy.
Helping organizations transform their business is a heroic undertaking, and I wish everybody out there trying to do it the very best of luck.