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Ronald Damhof

I have been a BI/DW practitioner for more than 15 years. In the last few years, I have become increasingly annoyed - even frustrated - by the lack of (scientific) rigor in the field of data warehousing and business intelligence. It is not uncommon for the knowledge worker to be disillusioned by the promise of business intelligence and data warehousing because vendors and consulting organizations create their "own" frameworks, definitions, super-duper tools etc.

What the field needs is more connectedness (grounding and objectivity) to the scientific community. The scientific community needs to realize the importance of increasing their level of relevance to the practice of technology.

For the next few years, I have decided to attempt to build a solid bridge between science and technology practitioners. As a dissertation student at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, I hope to discover ways to accomplish this. With this blog I hope to share some of the things I learn in my search and begin discussions on this topic within the international community.

Your feedback is important to me. Please let me know what you think. My email address is Ronald.damhof@prudenza.nl.

About the author >

Ronald Damhof has been a data warehouse/business intelligence practitioner for more than 15 years in various industries such as healthcare, government, industry, banking and retail. He teaches a master class on Data Warehousing in Depth. He also performs audits and quality reviews at several firms and is an active blogger. He is now writing his dissertation and studying the ways to integrate the academic rigor of the scientific community with the business world. You can reach him at +31 6 269 671 84, his web site at http://www.prudenza.nl/ or via email at ronald.damhof@prudenza.nl.

Change always comes bearing gifts


A story.....
  • Vendor X sells its ERP to a company in Healthcare;
  • Client wishes to setup its informational environment (data sharing, BI, CPM etc..) right from the start;
  • Vendor X pushes the 'standard' solution' they sell;
  • Client decides to decouple their informational environment from its source(s) for several reasons (heterogeneous sources, sustainability, compliance, adaptability etc..);
  • Vendor X deploys their ERP;
  • Client starts to design and build the informational environment;
  • Interfaces between ERP of vendor X and the informational environment are developed;
  • The ERP of vendor X off does not offer functional interfaces ('X keeps pushing their standard product'), so client needs to connect on the physical level;
  • Going-live is near; of both the ERP and the new informational environment

And then change management of vendor X regarding the ERP kicks in.

Client: 'What's your release schedule for patches'?
X: 'Every 2 weeks' 
Client: 'Huh'?

Client thinks: 'Damn, how can I keep up with this change schedule?'

Client: 'Well, can you tell me anything regarding the average impact of these patches?'
X: 'Well, they can be very small and very big' 

Client thinks: 'Ok, what are you NOT telling me' 

Client:'Ok, but this ERP is like 15 years old, so give me an overview of the average impact'
X: 'Basically anything can happen'

Client thinks: 'o, o'

Client: 'Ok, but the majority of these changes are of course situated in the application layer, not the data layer?'
X: 'Well..anything can happen.'

Client thinks: 'Is it warm in here?'

Client: 'Anything? Also in the data layer? Table changes, integrity changes, domain type changes, value changes?'
X: 'Aye'

Client thinks: 'Ok - I'm dead'

Client: '...at least tell me that existing structures always remain intact and the data remains to be auditable - extent instead of replace for example'
X: 'Huh'?

Client thinks: 'Well, at least I am healthy...'

Client: 'hmm...just a side note, we use Change Data Capture, I assume that these changes are fully logged?'
X: 'Nah - log is turned off, otherwise we can't deploy the changes' 

Client thinks: '..hmm....is my resume up to date?'


My point; do not assume your vendor (of any system) to engage in professional application development and a change management policy that takes into account the simple fact that data of these information systems need to be shared with other information systems in your company.

Change management and professional application development needs to be important criteria regarding the selection of information systems.



Posted June 8, 2010 2:29 PM
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