Author: Sid Adelman and Larissa Terpeluk Moss
Publisher: Addison-Wesley (ISBN 0201616351)
For the people who are interested in delivering a successful (user-focused, user-driven, user friendly) data warehouse – this is the manual to get you started. There are other good books on
the subject of the data warehouse, however, this book is a good introduction and a good reference manual to the world of data warehousing and project management.
My only complaint about the book is the title. This book goes beyond “project management” and touches on many other important aspects of a data warehouse. They have provided thought
provoking detail on topics such as data quality, selecting software, and data architecture. Because of this, I would make this suggested and recommended reading for each data warehouse team member,
novice to experienced.
This book has benefited me directly in the course of data warehouse projects that I currently manage. Since I manage multiple projects at a time, and since they are enterprise data warehouse
projects, they provide a lot of visibility, risk, challenges and obstacles. The authors have provided practical examples and solutions to specific problems that I have faced. For example, the
authors cover a very important aspect of the data warehouse project such as Chapter 10 – Data Models. Since I am an experienced data modeler, I found this section very useful. They cover the
benefits of data modeling and the challenges and solutions to many data integration issues.
This book is important because the authors share real-life experiences and their solutions to the problems they have faced. Since they have no ties to any vendors, the solutions they provide are
vendor-neutral.
The authors use “workshops” at the end of each chapter to test your knowledge on the specific subject area. The strength of these workshops is that the answers can be readily used on
the reader’s current project(s).
If you ever need to explain why you are doing certain specific things, such as project planning or data modeling, the authors provide reasons. These reasons can be communicated to management, team
members and other interested parties so they understand why certain things are being done, and the value that they add.
The CD-ROM includes the workshops as well as the templates and appendices.
The beauty of this book is that it can be used for non data warehouse projects. It could and should be used by every data warehouse team member, and most likely will become a useful reference
guide.