A Manager's Guide to Data Warehousing

Chapter 4. Successful IT–Business Partnerships

Cumulative experience over the past twenty plus years of implementing data warehouses, as well as talking to hundreds of corporations and consulting organizations about key factors that drove successful data warehouse implementations, have consistently shown that one of the most important factors for a successful data warehouse is a strong partnership between the business and systems communities. Other texts and articles typically focus on what IT must do to improve that partnership. This chapter focuses on what the business community can do to build and maintain a strong relationship with IT. Chapter highlights include the following:

• What a partnership really means

• Roles and responsibilities for both IT and the business

• Working with external consultant organizations

• Ideas to improve communication

• Tips for developing strong project teams

• Review of ongoing responsibilities

What a Partnership Really Means

Wikipedia offers the following definition of partnership:

A partnership is a type of business entity in which partners (owners) share with each other the profits or losses of the business undertaking in which all have invested.

This definition relates well to the type of partnership that is necessary to build and sustain a successful data warehouse. Both the business and IT community must take ownership of the data warehouse and be able to share equally in the success or failure of the process. The strength of any partnership develops over time, ...