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March 23, 2008
Top 5 Reasons Why Data Warehouses Fail
Lack of Executive sponsor
A data warehouse touches so many areas deeply, requires work from so many people and opens so many cans of worms in so many miscoded applications that it requires strong executive leadership to workthrough or workaround the turf battles.
Confusion between Data Warehousing tools and Data Warehouse
Although vendors will tell otherwise Data Warehousing tools are neither necessary nor sufficient to implement a data warehouse. They are in very nice to have category, making the technical details of developing a data warehouse easier and making it less likely to fail due to bad programming for an OTHERWISE sucessful effort. Tools don't turn around a badly understood / designed data warehouse by themselves.
Confusion between OLTP Application and Data Warehouse Development
Although the tools used are same - databases, programming languages, Hardware software and network infrastructure - they are used differently. Every aspect of IT from Hardware / Software infrastructure to Design, Development and QA is done with massive data flows and need for data precision, accuracy and meaning.
Work within Corporate IT Procedures
Big Corporations are setup with inflexable IT procedures, built over years of managing IT design, development and Operations within the company. It is very difficult to get them to think through and realize that some of these don't apply to Data Warehousing. Working around their procedures creates additional cost and risk to the project.
Violate KeepItSimpleS***** Principle
Once the project gets off the ground in a company starved off information for years, there is a tendancy to make the project comprehensive, even working in future requirements and source applications still in design phase. A sucessful data warehouse must have a vision and the ability to reject all requirements that don't fall within that vision. Else the project becomes too vague and too big to succeed.
ZEROTH law of Data warehousing:
Hire the right people. They will take you through ...
Posted by Vijay at March 23, 2008 5:45 PM
Comments
In my oppinion the main reason why Datawarehouse projects fail is that you handle it as disconnected IT projects, and do not take balanced development into consideration.
You need to add users as you add data, and many IT dept.'s doesn't realize this, and just try to create a holistic datamodel, which is then operationalized into a datawarehouse.
Instead you should ask 'what do I need this for?' and 'who should use it in the business?'.
I've seen several installments (from the business perspective) that has failed hugely because of this disconnected situation (and the situation being so disconnected that IT doesn't even realize that the projects have failed.... yet...)
Interesting read!
Best regards
Peter Møllebjerg Andersen
Posted by: Peter Møllebjerg Andersen at April 14, 2008 6:47 AM
Peter,
What do I need this for is usually taken care of - Its the vision of the data warehouse. "Who (and how) should use it in the business" is left unsaid and unimplented. As you imply that should the first thing people should look at after deciding what the vision is. Certainly one of top reasons why Data Warehouse Initiatives fail.
Vijay
Posted by: Vijay at April 14, 2008 12:41 PM
