Data Governance – Whose Issue Is It?

Data governance is an issue for everybody in the business intelligence business.  The following are a series of blogs on Data Governance.  I would like to invite comment and criticism.   Data Governance – Introduction Process Design Introducing Data Governance

Change Management Challenges

Like most systems projects, a Data Warehousing project involves significant changes in behavior in the business.  These changes often involve the information the business leaders use to make key decisions.  They often previously relied on different sources of data which they

Successful Data Warehousing 2

One of the keys to successful data warehousing is to consider the consumer of the products from the warehouse.  Originally the thought was that senior management would be the consumer of the products in the form of management reports or dashboards.  While this is often true,

Business Analyst Role

One of the most important roles in a data warehousing project is the business analyst.  However on most projects the role can involve several different roles.  In addition, the project might require then to fill multiple roles. The first and most common role is that of defin

Rushing to Solution

One of the things I noticed in myself and others is how quickly we rush to solutions.  In a business intelligence project, rather than finding out the business questions the client has, we rush to designing reports.  In the process we narrow our solution much to quickly.&nbs

Database Update Delay Cost a Life

An article in the St. Petersburg Times on March 1, 2008, caught my eye entitled "Database Delay may have hindered search"  The article says the updating of a state database may have kept police from finding a mother of two alive.  The policed focused on a green Cam

CoffeeCAST – #52 – Consultant in the Middle

Welcome to the 52nd CoffeeCAST with Stephen Hayward of Project X Ltd. Happy New Year and we are back on the air as it were.  I have asked Graham to join me while we talk a little about: Consultant in the Middle / Readiness Master Data Management (MDM – IBM, Oracle and Teradata)

Data Definitions – Wait Times

If one is going to use data to make decisions or measure performance, definition of data is very important.  I had a discussion recently with a friend about "Waiting Times" in the delivery of health services in Canada.   The reason for this discussion is I get

Innovation – Time for Some Recognition

Well, it is not often you get an award from a client.  Well thanks to some hard work by Doug (one of our Senior Consultants) we/Doug received recognition on some work that was done. The Recognition – "Exemplifying Breakthrough Innovation" Well aint that a peach.&n

Extending the Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW)

One of the challenges in the EDW world is extending the data warehouse.  If you are adding new data to the warehouse, you will need likely to change the model or at least update the schema and some other metadata.   So what is the advantage for the sponsor of the projec