Blog: Krish Krishnan: How to defeat a successful data warehouse program

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How to defeat a successful data warehouse program

Wow, this sounds stupid right. how can someone not want a successful data warehouse program? Guess what, while it is unbelievable it is true that even without trying, this is the fact across organizations. What makes this happen? well it my favorite subject and talking point, organization politics.

How does organization politics affect the project? well if the communication between different teams in a project is not clear enough and there is no executive leader who charges the team with responsibility and empower all the players appropriately, the end game is what a dear friend of mine calls "goat rodeo".

This exactly is the mantra on "How to defeat a successful data warehouse program". Why do organizations get this behavior? No one answer can be given to this question. But how do you change this behavior and get the data warehouse program to be a very successful program. This is where the key points as discussed below come into play

1. Executive Leadership - A strong executive leader is needed to lead a very successful data warehouse program. This leader should be empowered to make executive decisions on the program in the organization.

2. Empowered Teams - A SWAT team of players in each stakeholder team is needed to make decisions on the program. The teams should be from IT, IS and Business areas respectively.

3. Steering Committee - A steering committee of the executive leader and the SWAT teams will be a core team to guide and move this program.

4. Supporting partners - A complementing team of supporting partners is very essential to enable the core team to implement the program.

5. Policies and Procedures - A clear set of rules of engagement will be needed to be established and followed to implement a successful program.

6. TEAM - A very important concept, once you form a core team to start the data warehouse program, the word TEAM is very important. Often human "ego" plays a very negative influence in the success of a data warehouse program. Though a large number of the readers and colleagues may oppose this point, it is a hard fact that often a clash of "egos" leads to a traumatic effect on performance of the TEAM. A gentle but firm suggestion is to ensure that a data warehouse team be advised to be passionate about their work and program and not be overcome by emotional or egoistic issues which leaves a bad flavor on everybody in the organization.

Once again I hope that "we" all as data warehouse professionals ponder on this subject and provide ourselves and our organizations with some introspection on this subject, to ensure that data warehouse programs have a high success ration forever.