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September 1, 2003

Habits of Effective Sponsors

Business sponsors can make or break a data warehouse program. What habits make or break a business sponsor?

by Margy Ross
edited by Ralph Kimball

As data warehouse designers, you know how important a business executive sponsor is to your initiative. After focusing on data warehousing for the past two decades, I'm convinced that strong business sponsorship is the leading make-or-break indicator of data warehouse success. Having the so-called right sponsor can overcome a multitude of shortcomings, such as difficulties obtaining funding or resources, elsewhere in the project. On the other hand, sponsor turnover is one of the most common causes of data warehouse stagnation. Unsponsored data warehouses simply don't survive.

In this column, I'll explore the characteristics that distinguish highly effective data warehouse sponsors. Sponsors who take their responsibilities seriously seem to naturally crave guidance about doing their job well. They're just as interested in data warehouse success as you are. Of course, the more effective the business sponsor is, the more fun you'll have associating with the data warehouse initiative. Remember that you're both on the same team. So after reading this column, route it to your existing or potential sponsors, as this one's for them.

Setting Up for Success

You've volunteered (or perhaps been mildly coerced) to serve as the business sponsor for the data warehouse. You've been successful in most previous ventures, but this is new and different. Then again, it can't be that difficult, can it?

No: It's not difficult, if you're committed. After working with hundreds of data warehouse sponsors, the same patterns of behavior occur repeatedly. I encourage you to learn from others' mistakes and keep these habits in mind as you undertake your new responsibilities.

Believe in the Vision

As a data warehouse sponsor, it's important that you visualize and verbalize the potential effects of improved information on the organization's key initiatives. If you have the authority, but don't truly believe, then you should step aside as the business sponsor because you'll inevitably struggle to be effective. Data warehouse business sponsors need to be passionate about the cause and convey their vision to the organization.

If this doesn't sound like you, then you and the data warehouse team need to find an alternate sponsor before plowing full steam ahead; otherwise, you'll be doing a disservice to yourself, the warehouse team, and the entire organization.

Resist the Path of Least Resistance

A common approach to managing the enterprise's data assets is avoidance. Data is managed departmentally rather than across the organization. Each department or organizational function builds its own private data repository, but there's no overall enterprise view. It's initially appealing because every department gets exactly what it wants without contending with organizational consensus. Numerous existing data warehouses have been constructed on this basis.

However, because each department uses slightly different definitions and interpretations, no one's data ties to anyone else's, and the result is anarchy. You lose the ability to look across the enterprise, missing opportunities for cross-functional sharing. Likewise, this mayhem produces significant organizational waste. Partially redundant databases translate into partially redundant data development, administration, and storage expenses. Even more wasteful are the resources devoted to understanding and reconciling this inconsistently defined data.

Of course, you can bring order to the chaos, but you need the political clout, financial means, and inclination to challenge the status quo. Rather than letting everyone build independent, department-centric databases or dashboards, corporate information assets need to be proactively managed. Many CIOs consider it their fiduciary responsibility. As the business sponsor, you'll need to work closely with the CIO to encourage key stakeholders to watch out for the good of the greater whole. The enterprise will need to commit to a common foundation, relying on shared reference information (also known as "dimensions" to our regular readers) as the foundation for integration. No one said it would be a cakewalk.

Establishing order begins with a simple underlying premise: Key performance metrics are reused repeatedly across the organization. In a health insurance company, processing claims is a primary business activity, although one department may analyze the insured party's characteristics while another wants to study the health care professional involved. Despite distinct departmental focuses, claims data is a common link.