DATA WAREHOUSING FUNDAMENTALS: A Comprehensive Guide for IT Professionals

4.4. THE PROJECT TEAM

As in any type of project, the success of a data warehouse project rides on the shoulders of the project team. The best team wins. A data warehouse project is similar to other software projects in that it is human-intensive. It takes several trained and specially skilled persons to form the project team. Organizing the project team for a data warehouse project has to do with matching diverse roles with proper skills and levels of experience. That is not an easy feat to accomplish.

Two things can break a project: complexity overload and responsibility ambiguity. In a life cycle approach, the project team minimizes the complexity of the effort by sharing and performing. When the right person on the team with the right type of skills and with the right level of experience does an individual task, this person is really resolving the complexity issue.

In a properly constituted project team, each person is given specific responsibilities of a particular role based on his or her skill and experience level. In such a team, there is no confusion or ambiguity about responsibilities.

In the following sections, we will discuss the fitting of the team members into suitable roles. We will also discuss the responsibilities associated with the roles. Further, we will discuss the skills and experience levels needed for each of these roles. Please pay close attention and learn how to determine project roles for your data warehouse. Also, try to match your project roles with ...