1 Data Warehouse Assessments What, Why, and How Noah Subrin Technical Lead SRA International April 24, 2010

2 Biography Technical Lead for SRA International serving a large federal agency in the areas of web development and data warehousing Delivered presentations at several developer events throughout the Southeast Published several articles on SQL Server World Wide User group web site

3 Agenda BI Overview Data Marts vs Data Warehouse Discovery Process What is a data warehouse assessment? Why might we perform an assessment? How do we perform the assessment? Case Study

4 Possible Scenarios You have been asked to lead a new BI/DW initiative You have been asked to implement the next phase of an existing data mart or data warehouse You need to provide access to Production data to end users but security restrictions are in place You see a need or opportunity to position BI or data warehousing as a core technology

5 What is BI? Gathering and analysis of large amounts of data to gain insight to provide tactical and strategic decisions.

6 Data Warehouse vs Data Mart Data Warehouse: Holds multiple subject areas Holds very detailed information Works to integrate all data sources Storage designed to efficiently house large amounts of data Data Mart: Often holds only one subject area- for example, Finance, or Sales May hold more summarized data (although many hold full detail) Concentrates on integrating information from a given subject area or set of source systems Storage designed for efficient data reporting and access

7 Discovery Process

8 What We Assess We go beyond evaluation of an organization’s technical architecture. ReadinessArchitecture Support Change Management Analysis/Design Further Business Needs

9 Gap Analysis

10 Why perform the assessment? You want to measure key factors in order to maximize the chance of your project’s success Strong Senior Business Management Sponsor(s) Compelling Business Reasons Technical Feasibility

11 How? Identify stake holders and/or power users Interview power users to verify current needs and possibly anticipate future needs Identify and document business processes and policies Document Change management processes Document Points of contact

12 Benefits Identify business drivers, risks and long term goals Define budget ranges for each phase of your Data Mart roadmap Identify which critical business questions your Data Marts needs to answer and the value those answers will bring to your business Ways to enhance current process and add to existing systems. Customers are satisfied because they have access to more useful information to they can do their job Possible cost savings

13 Sample Deliverables AS-IS documents Data Models Report Inventory Query Inventory Technical Architecture diagram Business Process Documentation Inventory TO-BE definition Goal: interactive, permanent solution for end users access of data in a near- real time fashion Recommendations Tools Data Structures Archiving/Historical data requirements Reports Technical Architecture Governance processes

14 Case Study A large federal agency in a very large contact center Business Analysts lost direct access to data when moving data platform to a managed data center Needs – timely access to data, alignment of strategic goals, provide more useful information, roadmap and recommendations to achieve short term and long term goals

15 Assessment Process

16 Assessment Findings ETD and BI CCC environments Performance Interview Findings Approved Software Reporting Capabilities Data Retention Training

17 Assessment Recommendations

18 Lessons Learned Need buy in at executive level to be successful Set expectations appropriately Be prepared for follow up questions to your recommendations Have contingency plans and risk mitigation strategies in place Use SRA support structure (BI-COP) to leverage their expertise

19 Questions? Thank you for your participation

20 Contact Info Phone:

21 Additional Resources The Data Warehouse Lifecycle Toolkit, SecondEditionby Ralph Kimball et al. John Wiley&Sons© IBM Developerworks article rary/techarticle/dm-0506gong