Some clichés ring truer with experience and this one is re-enforced by countless DW, BI and performance management projects. Most of these projects have a plan and many are very well thought out but some critical success factors (CSFs) are:

• Never really incorporated into the plan
• Removed or reduced significantly during the budgeting process
• Cut back when the project is going over budget or missing its milestones

The CSFs to a DW, BI pr PM application that is used and trusted are:

• Testing
• Documentation
• Training & Knowledge Transfer

Time and time again you can trace the fact that the business people do not trust or understand the solution to these factors being short changed. Hundreds of BI licenses becoming “shelf-ware” or data shadow systems being used instead of the BI solution are great indicators that despite an IT group having implemented the latest and greatest BI suite and loaded a DW with terabytes and terabytes of data, if the business people do not know about it, understand it or trust it then it will not be used.

Despite business and IT both being complicit in the decisions to inadequately fund or cut resources when the project gets behind schedule for testing documentation or training, the bottom line is that BI solution does not get used. And the fingers start getting pointed which is never pretty.

In subsequent posts, we’ll discuss why each of these areas get short changed and some suggestions on what you should do.