Databases Reference
In-Depth Information
Developing and Maintaining Strong Business and Technology
Partnerships
It is one thing to affirm the importance of a strong partnership between the
business stakeholders and the technology units involved in a data warehouse
project, but it is another thing to put that into practice.
Partnerships often start out strong in the beginning. There is joint participa-
tion in developing a project's scope and objectives. A business sponsor may
be designated and may help launch the project. This is where the successful
partnerships begin to emerge. Once the project is underway, however, this
is
not
the time for the business community to sit back and wait for the next
briefing from IT. Now is the time to dig in and help the project move for-
ward. This includes gathering true business requirements and assisting with
understanding the data and helping to make decisions along the way.
Staying involved in a project on a daily or weekly basis ensures that
there is a good understanding of what is happening on a project. This
regular communication also helps to identify potential problems and get the
appropriate help in a timely manner. Detailed involvement helps to ensure
that decisions are made within the proper business context. What may seem
impossible to a technical project team may be easily accomplished by a business
representative, and vice versa.
In addition, it is easier to garner support from the rest of the business
stakeholders when one of their own comes to them with questions or the need
to clarify something. Too often, a technical or systems representative may not
be allowed the same level of access or may not be able to ask questions in a
way that is meaningful to the business. By working together, the project team
members can put together a strategy to get the business input that is necessary
to drive the data and technical decisions. A strong partnership that includes
a lot of mutual involvement also builds ownership of the data warehouse
across the business group. This is important for adoption and use of the data
warehouse when it is deployed.
REFERENCE
Chapter 4 provides more details about how to develop and main-
tain strong partnerships.
Identifying True Business Requirements
True business requirements are not a list of data elements, data sources, or even
reports. These requirements must be more fundamental to the business itself.
For example, the need to better measure marketing campaign performance,
understand and better manage loss ratios, and understand and track student
