The hunger of business people to obtain information isthe driving force behind the development of the datawarehouse concept. The ability to obtain informationeasily is often hindered by a lack of support from thetechnology department. The technology departments ofmost companies are not accustomed to providing support and trainingfor taking data and turning it into information that can be applied tomaking better decisions. Therefore, after a data warehouse is implemented,an organizational change usually must occur, to ensure thatthe business executives can effectively use their data. This change canbe substantial for many organizations because such jobs may not haveexisted before the data warehouse was implemented. This chapter willoutline the typical organizational supports needed when moving fromearlier information systems into a data warehouse.

Human integration is a very important part of the data warehouseimplementation. If you intend to build an enterprise data warehouse,then you will integrate information from all parts of your companyinto every aspect of decision making. To continually improve the datawarehouse applications, you will also need to integrate the variousbusiness people with the technology people. With classical applicationdevelopment, the project was finished when the user could access thelist of data on a green computer screen. When the user accepted thatthis green-screen application was built as planned, the technology departmentcould build the next green-screen application. Typically, therewas very little training and support after the green-screen applicationwas functioning properly and in production. A data warehouse implementationshould not be handled in this manner.

With data warehousing, you can never really walk away and think that...