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The delivery method is essentially a variant of the joint application development approach, adapted for delivery of data warehouses. The entire delivery process is staged in order to minimize risk, by producing production-quality deliverables, which are designed to grow to a full solution. Our experience has been that most enterprise data warehousing projects tend to have a development cycle of between 18 and 24 months from start to end. This is clearly difficult to justify; because the required investment is substantial, and no business benefits can be generated until the system is delivered. Clearly, an approach that allows the business to deliver “quick wins” is more attractive.

The approach discussed within this section will not reduce the overall delivery time-scales; however, it does ensure that business benefits are delivered incrementally through the development process. This means that the cost of investment can be offset and measured against the benefits being generated by the data warehouse. If the projected benefits are not being achieved in practice, further investment can be halted, or the project can be redirected to a different business need, minimizing the overall project risk. Before we discuss the delivery process, bear in mind that this method is designed to deliver an enterprise data warehouse, not a point solution. Enterprise data warehouses provide information about many (if not all) aspects of information being used by the business. They are not small databases (that is, 50 GB) or data marts being used to address a specific functional need. Enterprise data warehouses provide an accurate and consistent view of enterprise information, regardless of which point solutions they may be addressing at a specific point in time.