Whats the Scope of What Can Be Considered a Data Warehousing Failure - Assignment Example

DATA WAREHOUSING FAILURES 1. What’s the scope of what can be considered a data warehousing failure? Discuss. Data warehouse is the repository where historical data are kept. It is used for management decision support system. In general, in data warehouse daily transactional data are not kept. These data are analyzed with the help of complex queries (data mining) for knowing useful pattern, reports purpose. There is several scope of what can be considered as data warehousing failures. Some of them are over budget, extended deadline (unreasonable deadline for project) or pushing back the milestone dates, management support (lack of formal commitment from management), lack of focus or difficulty in identifying the scope of the Project (a business case for the data warehouse not clearly defined), poor data warehousing tool selection process, unproven technology (new or inappropriate software), internal politics within organization, end user involvement/participation in determining information requirements, incomplete functionality, unsatisfied end users, data warehouse tool implemented too complicated for users, below standard or unacceptable performance, not expandable once made, quality of report and data, management not recognizes the benefits of data warehousing, cost is considered instead of project, inappropriate data sources, etc. The three most important factors for successful implementation of any data warehouse project are; well defined scope, reasonable deadline and high-level management support and end users involvement/participation. The scope of the project should be defined clearly by making business case to avoid change of scope during the implementation phase. The deadline should be reasonable because extended deadline ultimately increases the cost of the project (over budget). The most important of all is that the high-level management knows the benefits of the project for providing support. Lacking any of these, results in data warehousing failure. 2. What generalizations apply across the cases? There are several things common in all the case studies. These are high-level management support, the short-term focus of top management (lack of focus), unreasonable deadline, end user involvement, inappropriate tool selection, and internal politics. Auto Guys, Complicated Systems, North American Federal Government and High-Tech Company; all lacks management support for their data warehousing project. In case of North American Federal Government, to acquire the right technology, a formal approval process took almost a year. All the organizations have not clear focus for their data-warehousing project. For example, for North American Federal Government, over a six- month period, the number of planned users grew from 200 to 2,500 for data warehouse project. Unreasonable deadline is another common factor for all the cases. In case of Government Research Laboratory, the IS manager was offered a bonus to the IS technicians if they could get the data warehouse up and running by the end of fiscal year, which was just four month away. It was too ambitious considering the size of the project. In addition, for North American Federal Government data warehousing project, the initial deadline was 8 months, which extended to 2 years before cancellation of the project. The tool/technology selected for data warehouse project implementation also plays an important factor for data warehouse project success. In case of Auto Guys the tool selected are new and unproven. This is the case for the Complicated Systems and High-Tech Company also. Complicated Systems, High-Tech Company and Slovenian Insurance Company all lacked end user involvement for their data warehouse project. In addition, internal politics within the organization (for example, North American Federal Government) was also an important factor for data warehouse project failure. 3. What do you find most interesting in the failure stories? There are several interesting factors in all the failures stories. However, lack of focus and management support and end user involvement are the most interesting factors across all the case studies. It is an critical factor for any project that the clear business objectives , cost and associated benefits of the project is determined first and should be known the high level management for their support. This is the first important factor for success of any project that the high-level management takes interest in project and knows that the benefits are much higher than the cost of the project. Almost in all cases, the high-level management was not aware of the benefits of the data warehouse project after implementation. The focus of the project is also an important factor. In cases where the size of the project is large, there should be some prototype of the project implemented first than only the large size project started after taking feedback from prototype of the project. The scope of the project should be reasonable considering the duration and cost of the project. Another interesting fact is the end user involvement. At the end, the data-warehousing project is used by these end users. They should be involved in each phase (from requirement analysis to implementation). 4. Do they provide any insights about how a failure might be avoided? The case study provides an insight how a failure might be avoided. In case of Auto Guys, following observations are made: the management of expectations is critical to any sizeable data-warehousing project, use of proven technology, sizable data warehouse project should be considered more as R & D effort instead of typical IT project. In case of GRL, it was noticed that warehouse initiative should have been in synchronization with mainframe changes and other IT initiatives, long-term future planning, a prototype (pilot) initially for knowing technical and fine-tuning problems and reasonable deadline. In case of Complicated Systems, end users were not brought in picture for determining information requirements although they were the targeted beneficiaries. In addition, the poor data warehousing tool selection process. In case of North American Federal Government, the lack of focus from business unit for identifying scope of the project, pushing back the milestone dates and internal politics were important factors for data warehouse project failure. For High-Tech Company, inappropriate software, lack of formal commitment from management and organizational turnover and inappropriate data sources are the reason for failure. The loss of sponsorship is the reason for failure for North American Tax Agency. Integrated Health data warehouse project fails because of requirement of large funding and multiple years to realize its potential. For Slovenian Insurance Company the business case for the data warehouse was not clearly defined, potential users were not known and formal commitment from IT department to participate. Learning Outcomes and Thoughts After reading case studies, several interesting learning outcomes come. By doing this assignment several reasons for data warehouse project failures are identified, which can be also applicable for any IT project. After studying this assignment, several important factors for success of any IT project such as management support, focus and scope, deadline, software selection, user involvement, internal politics, etc are identified and now known to us. Now we know that lacking any of these can result in failure of IT project. Now we know that scope of the project is most critical factor, therefore, it should be realistic in terms of budget available and duration of the project. In addition, the high-level management should be known all the time that the benefits from the project are much higher than the cost associated with the project so as they have interest on project because it is said that they have short memory. Deadline is another critical factor, which ultimately results in success of the project. If the project is slipping schedule deadline for the project than the required recourses will be also needed for those periods, which ultimately increase the cost of the project. Therefore, reasonable deadline is required for success of any project. End-user for whom the project is made should be involved in all phases of project. Ignoring these can lead to failure of project because of the tool developed can be too complicated to use by end users or they provide incomplete functionality and unacceptable performance. Read More