Databases Reference
In-Depth Information
Provide advanced education opportunities:
In addition to ensuring that
new staff members learn the basics, it is important to offer a series of
courses or tutorials to help current users increase their data warehouse
skills. Education opportunities should include more in-depth training on
the data, additional features, and capabilities of the BI technology and
how to perform more advanced analyses.
Be practical:
Best practices are often the culmination of years of experi-
ence, yet rarely does one single project or organization do everything in
every possible area completely and thoroughly. Ensure that the develop-
ment and enforcement of standards does not overshadow reality. Make
informed decisions about what is feasible for the organization today, and
move toward your long-term vision.
Be flexible:
The entire management team must be willing to listen and
then adjust as necessary to keep the data warehouse going.
Don't give up:
Data warehousing must be viewed as a new corporate
lifestyle, rather than a single project with a set deadline for completion.
The data warehouse is never ''done.'' When problems crop up or a data
warehouse stalls, many organizations simply cut the funding and dissolve
the project teams. Then, after several months, a new effort is created to
start over. Rather than stop completely before a project is perceived to
have reached the point of delivering value, take a hard look at what
progress has been made to date. With a little more patience and effort,
some value can be seen.
Be sure to follow through:
Too often, great work is completed to set
standards but then they are never adopted. The enterprise team can
pull together recommendations for best practices or to enhance a project
methodology to support data warehousing, but if these are never used
by any projects, then this has been a waste of time. Once standards and
recommendations are developed, additional effort must be expended to
put these into practice.
Continue to address data governance issues:
These include defining the
data, implementing master data management, and developing methods
to address data quality issues.
These are a compilation of practical steps and areas that require ongoing
attention to increase the long-term viability of a data warehouse. It is more
important to keep an eye on how the data warehouse enables business users.
When the data warehouse is helping support the business, this generates more
use. Business managers can do several things to encourage continued use of
the data warehouse:
