SAS Warehouse Administrator

An IT Checklist for Data Warehousing Success

Your operational systems are in place. You will continue to optimize them, but your biggest challenge is to reinvigorate your relationship with the business units of your company. The ultimate goal? To make them champions of the use of information technology.

This goal is best achieved through data warehousing, since it puts usable decision-making tools in the hands of knowledge workers, without affecting the performance of critical operational systems. The corporate checklist has identified the business area or project which will be the focus of your first data warehousing project. It is your responsibility to insure that all aspects of data warehousing--including management, organization, and exploitation--are implemented to guarantee success of the project. This technology checklist is designed to assist you.

• Thoroughly review and document the reasons for IT to invest in the chosen business area as the target of the initial data warehousing project. Include your vision of the successful project.
• Investigate similar data warehousing successes at other companies to understand what is involved and what can be gained.
• Be comfortable with the project. Its success will bring greater respect and acknowledgement for the IT group and should allow you to optimize your resources. The project itself is a form of business reengineering and will require your commitment and support.
• If you are not the corporate sponsor, make sure the sponsor is as comfortable with the project as you are. Remember, the aims are to provide the business area with immediate gain through optimal use if IT and to further the goals and vision of the company. Others will come to you to build on that success.
• Choose project team members who have a thorough knowledge of the available applications and systems, and who are comfortable working with the business group.
• Perform a "data audit", then review with the project team to list those existing applications and systems that generate operational data for the chosen business unit or process.
• Review the "information wishlist audit" with the project team to list those areas in which "new information" and flexibility would be keys to success.
• Review the "user audit" with the project team to identify the types of knowledge workers who will most clearly benefit from the system.
• Perform an "IT audit", then review with the project team to determine the best mix of existing IT investment and additional IT requirements.
• Perform a "solutions audit" to review available application solutions and techniques for use in the "exploitation" part of the warehouse.
• Merge the lists and identify those few items where data warehousing success can be most quickly achieved...items that also maximize your return on investment.
• Write a data warehousing mission statement that incorporates the goals for both the business and IT members of the project team based on the targeted subset.
• Be sure to gain agreement on the time and priority commitment of each team member, as well as an IT budget.
• Establish milestones of success for the project that directly relate both to the goals and to a return on investment for your department.
• Utilize Rapid Applications Development tools as much as possible to quickly put systems into business users' hands. They will not know exactly what they want until they have worked with some systems, so an iterative applications deployment approach is called for early on in the project.
• Have constant review meetings with members of the team. If the proper tools are chosen, the business users should be able to start presenting their progress, via simple data warehousing exploitation applications, very quickly.
• On completion of the project, make its success known to others in the organization. If implemented correctly, the success will be clearly visible to all involved since it directly relates to the company's goals and vision.