Developing Data Warehouse Business Requirements for Higher Education: Key Lessons and Templates to Get You Started

Presentation Summary

Jenna Allen, University of California Office of the President

The University of California, Office of the President is building an enterprise data warehouse called the Decision Support System. A partnership between business and IT, the Institutional Research Unit and the Information Resources and Communications Office have been working together for 2 years to design and implement this solution. Business Requirements Gathering has been at the center of our efforts to ensure user acceptance of the DSS and is embedded in many steps along the way – from definition of broad scope through data modeling, testing, and report/query production. Institutional Research (IR) is tasked with gathering the business requirements for the IT team. The complex nature of the Higher Education enterprise poses unique challenges for this process. Working with consultants and our IT team, IR has developed both a process for engaging our business users and gathering their requirements as well as a portfolio of deliverables and documentation. In this session, we’d like to share our experience as well as templates from two rounds of Business Requirements Gathering from Phases 1 & 2 of the Decision Support System (Payroll/Personnel and Student and Instruction respectively).