October 15, 2007 at 8:01 am
Many companies want to implement data warehouse, and they think it is just another IT department. However BI department is not your traditional IT department. It requires people with special skills to do the job.
The traditional department has a manager who handles multiple projects, follows the company's methodology liked 'waterfall', 'iterative'. So the project has its own definition, its functional spec and everything. The manager then gives each developer a discrete task. Maybe there will be a weekly meeting to talk about the project and if problem comes up, they will find the appropriate people to help to solve the problem. When the project put in production, chances are the system will not change in the next few months or it will not immediately integrate or affect other systems.
However a data warehouse project is different. It involves the users; IT is the one who runs the project. It makes sure the user requirements, business rules, transformation values are there. The source data may comes from many different sources and most of time they are not clean. Also don't assume all the departments in the company use the same term. The environment is dynamic and changes all the time. So the DW developers are not just database developers, they have to be dynamic and changes as the requirements change too. They have to analyze the data, know the business, and especially know what Data warehouse is.
Most of the companies fail because they do not understand the extent of the BI business, buying a tool does not help them solving the problem. Hiring a consultant company is not doing any good if the company does not follow through.
my 2 cents
October 16, 2007 at 9:02 am
Kudos for recognizing many of the things that go into a successful BI project. My$0.01: these are the same issues on almost any other software project. Want to make [insert your project name] fail? Don't involve users, don't get good requirements, don't work with the business on defining terminology, etc. BI is highly visible, which will make most failures spectacular.
[/soap box]
YMMV,
Larry
Larry
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