Data Warehouse Project Management

Listen, Listen, Listen to the Stakeholders By Hari Mailvaganam A paramount determining factor in the success of data warehousing is the input of stakeholders. Data warehousing is very unique to an organization, its business processes, systems architecture and decision support needs. Project management for data warehousing allows for large amounts of user input and at all phases of the project. There are commercial software products tailored for data warehouse project management. A good project plan lists the critical tasks that must be performed and when each task should be started and completed. It identifies who is to perform the tasks, describes deliverables to be created and identifies milestones for measuring progress. There are a number of publications on data warehousing project management. The standard bearer publication is Ralph Kimball's Data Warehouse Lifecycle Toolkit. Over the years I have worked with different project management methodologies and processes for data warehousing. In this article I have listed a summary of a project management methodology that I have developed that also ties in with the Rational Unified Process (RUP). This is especially useful if the data warehousing project is part of a greater development effort which follows RUP. The program management framework for data warehousing follows tested methodologies. The methodology described below follows the project management workflow of the Unified Process.

Figure 1. Rational Unified Process; Copyright IBM The project plan should include presentations at regular intervals, say monthly, to management and stakeholders. The presentation will include:

Discussion on any challenges and determine if project is on schedule; Review of activities and priorities to be achieved before next meeting; Contingency plans to make up time and address problems; An open question-and-answer period followed by a summary.

Phases of the Unified Process

The phases in project management following UP, Figure 1, are: 1. 2. 3. 4. Inception Elaboration Construction Transition

The project lifecycle is composed over time into four sequential phases, each concluded by a major milestone, Figure 2. The RFP is produces at the end of the inception phase.

Figure 2. Phases in the Unified Process; IBM 1. Inception Phase

Project planning and evaluation. Requirements gathering. Define features the system must support. Identify the stakeholders who oversee the system use. Users and other applications (i.e. actors) that will interface with the system. Define framework to identify business rules. List the events that the system must be aware of and respond to. List the constraints and risks place on the project. Define product selection criteria. Define project management environment. Prepare and obtain approval of sponsors for project mandate and approach. Define data warehouse objectives. Define query library/location matrix. Define query libraries. Establish meta-data. Prepare migration specifications. Develop query usage monitoring. Technical infrastructure assessment. Current technology assessment. Release of RFP.

The project plan must also place importance to:

Change control. Risk assessment. Training. Scope agreements. Resources. Communication.

2. Elaboration Phase

Review of RFPs and selecting winning candidate. Determine size of the data warehouse. Determine complexity and cleanliness of the data. Identify number of source databases and their characteristics. Select DSS tools. Determine network requirements. Conduct training. Integration of data. Plan quality assurance testing procedures.

3. Construction Phase

Implement components. Systems integration. Conduct testing. Plan deployment. Develop support material.

4. Transitions Phase

Roll-out of modules. Managing change-control requests. Conduct beta testing to validate the new system against user expectations. Perform converting operational databases. Evaluate performance and benchmarking. Evaluate that deployment baselines are complete. Obtain stakeholder feedback on deployment baselines consistency with evaluation criteria. Fine-tune product based on feedback. Release product to users. Product release milestones.

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Project Planning Iteration

Project Planning Iteration

Project Planning Iteration results Project plan User requirements document Progress report Schedule Roles in the team Personal learning goals Project Planning Iteration Activities

Project Planning Iteration results

Here we will shortly describe the results of the project planning iteration and provide a link to our project plan when it is finished. The deliverables of the iteration:

Project plan
Neula_Project_Plan.pdf

User requirements document

Neula_User_Requirements_Document.pdf

Progress report
Neula_PP_iteration_progress_report_F.pptx

Schedule
The Schedule for the project as planned in the project planning iteration.

Roles in the team

Some special roles have been set according to the individual learning goals and special skills. Name Primary Learning Goals Skills Primary Team Learning Team Responsible for

Riku Development Seppl infrastructure,

Web 2.0 Technologies,

Project Management,

Architecture

Communications, Client's

innnovation, design Paavo Running quality Hppl and testing processes, technologies

Project Management

Design and requirements

Requirements

Quality Quality Architecture Assurance, Assurance and Testing Testing methods, Project Management Web 2.0 Architecture, Technologies, Infrastructure Servers, Testing Tools and Methods Technologies Architecture Project Management

Testing

Eero Agile Palomki management, Web 2.0 architectures

Architecture

Ville Harvala

Web 2.0 Technologies, Server, Requirements elicitation

Infrastructure, Design and requirements

Documentation of Technologies

Lauri Project Hukkane management, n Requirements elicitation Ohto Rainio Project management, tools

Web Servers

Infrastructure

Project Management, Design and requirements Project Management

Server, Infrastructure

Web technologies

Architecture

Technology choices

Lasse Project Hakuline management, n tools, Suunto

QA practices

Quality Project Assurance and Management, Testing Design and requirements Design and requirements

Quality practices

Dani Web 2.0 Architectures, Prnne Technologies, SEDesign n practices

Quality Communications, Assurance and Design Testing

Personal learning goals

Name Personal Learning Goals

Riku I'm very interested in learning about what technologies and infrastructure is Seppl needed for web 2.0 development. In addition, innovating for sports is very

interesting and I would like to learn how we can tap the innovativeness of our team and use the expertise of Suunto to support this Paavo I would like to learn how to efficiently run quality and testing processes that I have Hppl learnt. In addition, I'm interested in learning more about web 2.0 technologies and the architecture of gadgets Eero I am looking forward to improve my knowledge of the architectures of web2.0Palomki applications and gadgets. In addition I hope to improve my skills in managing and working with a group of specialists, communicating clearly and to catch a thing or two about new tools available for software development with agile methods. Ville Harvala I would like to learn at least the basics of the platforms we are going to develop on. Some of these applications will need a server to run on, and I'm also very interested in how to deploy the servers, for example how to install CVS, MySQL and PHP. I also want to see how requirements elicitation will work in a project like this and I believe it will also be interesting to learn how to handle the customer relationship well.

Lauri I hope that I will have got practical experience on how a bigger software project is Hukkane handled. I'm especially interested in the requirements and how they are turned into n reality. Also the development of the work and communications processes will be interesting to learn from. Ohto Rainio My goal is to develop my technical my technical skills and also my view on how ITprojects and the problems and risks should be handled. I'm interested to learn form the work practices a team that doesn't know each other from before develops. I believe I will learn good processes and tools that are needed in this kind of broader project. I'm also interested to learn from the interaction between Suunto and the team and what kind of communication can work.

Lasse Learning new techniques and frameworks and deepening my current knowledge. Hakuline Learning good work practices for working in a team. Applying software methods in n practice. Getting familiar with Suunto and how they work. Dani Developing Widget/Gadget/Application -type of small programs. Learning to use Prnne web 2.0 interfaces and API:s, maybe even some mash-up techniques. Learning n about the management of a big team (8 + key stakeholders from the customer): How the roles are setup so that they work, how I can be efficient and stay in my role. Using SE methods in practice: defining, designing, follow-up and iterations. Learning from the right kind of communication between the team and the customer and inside the team.

Project Planning Iteration Activities

This is a the introduction to our PP Iteration plan. It is a broad overview of what we will be executing in the project planning iteration. Please see more details from the current information section. (Link on the frontpage of our wikispace. This section will be updated after the iteration with our project plan.