Databases Reference
In-Depth Information
What was the business justification for the project?
Who is the business sponsor for the system?
What business groups is this system intended to support, or who is the
target audience?
How many business users are using it? How frequently? To answer what
type of questions?
Who is the recipient of the results of these reports and/or analyses?
Is this part of the data warehouse initiative? If not, why not?
When was this system built?
What are the biggest known challenges or problems?
What are the biggest benefits from this system? Who or which group
benefits?
At what stage is this system in its overall life cycle: Design and develop-
ment? Initial deployment? In production for multiple years?
Are any return on investment (ROI) figures available? Do they indicate
cost savings or improved business results, such as increased profit?
At the end of a session, always ask what else should be known about
this system or the group. For example, what are the expectations and/or
concerns about a data warehouse?
The objective of asking these questions is to get an understanding of how
these systems are helping the business. For some systems, you may find many
of these questions to be difficult or impossible to answer. Not getting answers
is just as important as getting a lot of detail. The lack of a business purpose or
focus is a common problem for many data warehouse-like systems.
When you receive positive feedback for a reporting system that is not a data
warehouse, this is good. Business needs are being met. There may not be a
need to build data warehouse at this time. However, you still need to look
beyond the immediate users of any reporting system to determine if there
are other areas that need access to this system and/or data. Frequently, the
existing reporting system is not meeting the needs of the business, which is
why there is interest in data warehousing.
If you are looking at a data warehouse and your answers reveal sound
business responses, congratulations! This indicates that the data warehouse
is supporting the business and adding value to the organization. This does
not mean that everyone should sit back and get comfortable, because there
is always more that can be done. Effort can be spent on improving and
gaining even more value, rather than on remediation work. Unfortunately,
for many data warehouses, these questions cannot be answered at all, or the
responses are phrased only in technical terms. This failure can indicate a
