Front Line Data Warehouse Management

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Front Line Data Warehouse Management

• Presented by
• Vicki Cole

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My perspective...

• Educational experience - undergraduate studies in
  Computer Engineering with a degree in Finance
• Professional experience - ten years in various
  investment banking roles
• Data warehousing experience - seven years in
  various roles. Currently manage the Office of
  Investments data warehouse for Nationwide
  Insurance.

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Your perspective...

• Raise your hand if you
• work in data warehousing
• are a manager
• are a practitioner
• are an end-user
• dont have a technical background

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What Ill cover today...

• Jill Dyche, Baseline Consulting, presented What
  Business Managers Need to Know About Data
  Warehousing to the 2002 TDWI Summer Conference
  in Las Vegas
• Jill identified many of the challenges data
  warehousing efforts consistently face
• Id like to extend her framework, by identifying
  practical tips learned from front line management
  experience

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What youd like to cover today...

• What do you want to know about front line data
  warehouse management?
• Please feel free to share your experiences with
  data warehousing

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Lessons learned so far...

• Even though business intelligence has evolved,
  some users will always want canned, hard-coded
  reports
• Lesson learned Use the cost to support
  approach to persuade users to embrace
  parameterized reports or OLAP tools. Most
  business managers dont realize the expense of
  maintaining hard coding nor the advantages of not
  hard coding

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Lessons learned so far...

• Successful data warehouses are considered
  business solutions
• Lesson learned Find yourself a data warehousing
  buddy and help them solve a business problem.
  Theyll become your advocate and sell your data
  warehouse

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Lessons learned so far...

• Data warehousing shouldnt be considered just
  another IT development activity
• Lesson learned Ive seen data warehousing
  efforts flounder until the business is pulled
  into the evaluation and development efforts.
  Involving the business seems simple, but can turn
  a failing effort around

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Lessons learned so far...

• Both the business and IT organizations should
  share the blame for failures
• Lesson learned The technology is the easiest
  part of data warehousing. Pinning down business
  requirements are much more challenging. Users are
  often the worst judge of their needs, because
  they dont know what they dont know

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Lessons learned so far...

• Navigating the political waters that surround
  data warehousing can be difficult
• Lesson learned Information is power and users
  will grapple for control. Find an executive
  sponsor that can provide cover and find ways for
  users to succeed

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Lessons learned so far...

• Requirements-driven development
• Lesson learned Build out phased deliverables to
  provide consistent business value so that funding
  continues

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Lessons learned so far...

• High quality data
• Lesson learned Nothing short circuits a great
  data warehousing solution faster than data
  quality issues. All aspects of project delivery
  can be textbook quality until testing reveals
  that a data scrubbing effort will be required
  before the business can realize the project
  benefits

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Lessons learned so far...

• Build scalable solutions
• Lesson learned Assume your efforts will be
  successful and build something that can be grown
  and leveraged without major re-work

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Lessons learned so far...

• Automate your hierarchy
• Lesson learned Capture and work to standardize
  your organizational hierarchies in the data
  warehouse from Day 1. If you dont, youll be
  facing re-development of all of those reports.

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Lessons learned so far...

• Use meaningless primary keys from Day 1
• Lesson learned For example, don't use zip code
  as part of a primary key. If you did, and the
  person later moved to a different zip code, you
  would be faced with either changing the primary
  key, which most likely would cause major
  problems, or allow programs using the zip code as
  part of the key to fail

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Questions...

• I can be reached with questions or comments at
• colev2_at_nationwide.com