Database Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 15
Building and Executing Your Big Data Plan
What You Will Learn in This Chapter
• Getting Sponsor and Stakeholder Buy-in
• Identifying Technical Challenges
• Identifying Operational Challenges
• Monitoring Your Solution Post-deployment
Understanding that you need to look at your data infrastructure and
reevaluate how you are handling certain sets of data today and in the future
is one thing; actually identifying a project and then getting executive sponsor
buy-in is another. In most organizations, many opportunities exist for
improvement; it's often difficult to find the one opportunity that
demonstrates what a new technology or approach can do for an organization
whileatthesametimeproviding areasonable returnoninvestment (ROI).In
this chapter, we weave throughout the challenges of building and executing
your big data plan. Specifically, the chapter begins by looking at how to gain
buy-in from sponsors and stakeholders. Then, you learn about technical and
operational challenges and how to overcome them. The chapter concludes
with a discussion about what you need to do after you've deployed your
solution, including how to plan for its growth.
Gaining Sponsor and Stakeholder Buy-in
One of the most difficult things to do when evaluating a new technology is
choosing the project. Those of us who come from a technical background
tend to look at most projects from that technical angle. We ask ourselves
“which one of these applications is a good fit for technology
x
?” The problem
with this approach is that it doesn't align itself with business needs. That
particular business group might not have the budget for any new projects
or hardware. The business group may be perfectly happy with their current
application and not want any significant changes. The business group may
simply be resistant to change. We have to remember as technologists we love
to jump in and learn them. What you may see as a fascinating new product
to learn, the business users often see as another new tool they have to learn
