Data Warehouses Non Technical Issues
When companies get ready to implement a data warehouse, few of them pay attention to the political issues that may surround it. It must be emphasized that politics can reduce the chances for success with a data warehouse project, and I want to warn companies against these issues so they can be avoided. The definition of a data warehouse political scenario is when the goals of two parties within the company collide.
In most cases, these conflicts will be closely related to the data warehouse project. While the conflict may seem petty at first, it can eventually have a negative effect on the developers, and this will eventually hurt the project as a whole.
The problem with most papers on data warehouses is that too much emphasis is placed on the technical details of the project. Many writers on the subject fail to account for many of the non-technical issues that can cause a data warehouse project to become a failure. The parties that will be odds the most during this project will be the users against IS, IS against IS, and user against user. A company that is divided against itself cannot stand, so these issues must be dealt with if the data warehouse project is to be a success. There are a number of challenges that a company must meet when dealing with data warehouses, and some of them are resources, deadlines, and similar issues.
Conflicts between IS projects can be some of the most difficult to solve. There is a crucial decision that companies must make at the beginning of a data warehouse project, and this is whether or not the DW development group should be connected to a group that works with transaction processing, or should the DW group be independent. Traditionally, transaction processing teams have worked closely with work backlogs, and they will see the need to quickly respond to any crisis that may occur. Despite this, some experts believe that data warehouses are much more successful when they are done via an entrepreneur like perspective.
It should be noted that many companies will become heavily dependent on their data warehouses, especially when it comes to their daily activities. To be efficient, this data warehouses need to have very high levels of industrial safety. If the data warehouse development group is allowed to work independent of other teams, this will reduce the transfer of knowledge that may be necessary for the industrial safety of data warehouses. Another important decision that a company will need to face is who should be responsible for administering the databases for the data warehouses. In most cases, the available options will either be the data warehouse development group or the DBA group.
A company will often find that they will have to consistently make changes to the structure of data warehouse databases. The use of data marts, combined with the wrong mentality by workers, can create a situation where index and table changes need to be made. If the developers of the data warehouse are concerned with having problems with the users, they may want changes to be made frequently, and if they have to deal with the DBA backlog, they could be irritated. At the same time, the DBA has profound knowledge of the processes that are necessary for the industrial safety of the databases.
If the DBA team is pushed out of the support for the data warehouse project, this can reduce the valuable wisdom that may have been made available to the project. It is also important for companies to make sure they get the support of feeder system developers. They are useful because they have a lot to lose if the data warehouse development is not successful. Often, when a data warehouse project is initiated, a company will find transaction process problems that may have remained undetected for a long period of time. The developers who are proficient with these systems may feel alienated if they feel that their work will not be appreciated.
Being able to deal with the politics of a data warehouse is crucially important. In addition to the technical issues that a company must deal with, there are other factors that must be considered as well. If everyone is not on the same page, the chances of the project being successful are highly reduced.
