Roninweb: Chapter 2 The Project Management Context and Process

What Went Wrong?

Many data warehousing projects are side-tracked or derailed completely by politics. Data warehousing projects are always potentially political because they cross departmental boundaries, change both the terms of data ownership and data access, and affect the work practices of highly autonomous and powerful user communities. Many organizations fail to admit that many data warehousing projects fail primarily because management and project teams do not understand and manage politics. Marc Demarest found over 1200 articles on the topic of data warehousing based on a journal search he did from July 1995 to July 1996. Many of those articles offer advice on how to run successful data warehousing projects and focus on the importance of design, technical, and procedural factors, when, in fact, political factors are often the most important in helping these projects succeed.