Planning to Fail – A case study in project management in a data warehouse environment

Presentation Summary

Susan Dastour, The George Washington University, Michael Wolf, Manager Data Warehousing

Project Management is a unique and challenging profession that rarely requires any data warehousing expertise. However, in the process of implementing, maintaining, or expanding a data warehouse, analysts and developers often find themselves called upon to manage technically demanding and complex projects. The GW Data Warehouse team recently completed a project that tested a full production fail over from one campus to another. Using this “GW Data Warehouse Disaster Recover Test” as an example, this presentation will highlight the lessons we learned while managing this project. Themes such as IT governance, cross departmental collaboration, understanding organizational priorities, and common project difficulties will be discussed.

We hope that other data warehouse professionals will be able to capitalize on our successes and learn from our mistakes as they manage their own projects in the future.