Most Data Warehousing projects fail. As many as 70-80% as per some claims. Still, no one talks about them.

Data Mining, Analytics and BI roll-outs are unlike any other project your organization may have undertaken. Political and non-technical issues can derail the fragile project which is anyway struggling to handle ambiguous and constantly changing requirements.

Mark Demarest, in his classic 1997 article The Politics of Data Warehousing says:

Data warehousing projects are frequently side-tracked or derailed completely by non-technical factors, in particular the political treaty lines within the firm, and the politicized nature of data itself. Because data warehouses are infrastructure for sociotechnical systems (STSs) within the firm, politics and the exercise of power are inherent in data warehousing projects, and data warehouse designers have to adopt work practices and methods from non-technical disciplines, think of themselves in new ways, and employ some fairly sophisticated qualitatively sociological methods in order to optimize the chances for successful deployment of data warehouses.

The Politics of Data Warehousing also lists down 10 warning signals to detect politicization of the project, and 10 countermeasures – essentially the recipe for delivering on the project promise.

Larry Greenfield, in a more recent article titled Data Warehousing Political Issues identifies three common threads as:

1) Data warehousing imposes new obligations whose responsibilities are unclear
2) Data warehousing requires changes in processes that an organization is comfortable with
3) Data warehousing requires agreement on some, but not all, definitions of data.

Larry classifies the political issues into those that are within the IS organization (IS to IS), those that are between IS and the users (IS to Users), and those that are between users (User to User). Click here to read Data Warehousing Political Issues.

And don’t miss the article Data Warehousing Gotchas, listing some little known nuggets of wisdom and experience that can save your project. As Larry says, “Forewarned is forearmed!” Click here to read Data Warehousing Gotchas