Mis 578 - Module 2 - 3m Discussion Questions

Module 2 Discussion Questions

1. The 3M case (Goodhue and Wixom, 2001) describes the approach 3M followed in building a global data warehouse (GDW). Watson (p. 494) and Khan (p. 47) discusses various data warehouse architectures and approaches to building one. Match these architectures to 3M’s GDW implementation. Explain you answer and describe in your own words the approach 3M followed in building the GDW.
   
   2. List and discuss in your own words three criteria business should use to evaluate and select between distinct data warehouse architecture (Watson, p. 494, Ariyachandra and Watson 2005).

An organization should select a data warehouse architecture based on a number of factors.  First, let’s evaluate the various types of data warehouse architectures.  Watson outline three different architectures which have their own advantages and disadvantages.  First is the independent data mart which contains a silo of information and usually meets a “localized” need.  The next two are the enterprise data warehouse and the data mart bus architecture which both are considered enterprise-wide architectures.

An organization should choose one of the three architectures based on the problem it is trying to solve.  Three reasons or targets are also described by Watson on pp. 491-492.   The first objective is the isolated departmental initiative which is capable of answering questions for a single department (i.e. sales.)  The information would be contained within only that department and not shared amongst other business units.  If the DW were to achieve an organizational goal, they might choose the independent data mart architecture.  If I were personally involved in this decision however; I would advise against it in that the architecture is not scalable and might not meet the future needs of the organization.

Another criteria or goal in deciding on data warehouse architecture is establishing an infrastructure for future business intelligence needs.  With this objective in mind, an organization could choose either of the two enterprise-wide data warehouse architectures (enterprise data warehouse and data mart bus architecture.)  In this situation, I believe that the enterprise data warehouse architecture would be the best fit because as described in the reading, it starts with a high-overview with “special attention given to building a scalable infrastructure.”

Finally, if the goal or target of the company is a total transformation of its business, they could also select one of the two enterprise-wide architectures.  The data bus architecture might prove more advantageous since you can build the system department-by-department with the end-goal of a unified data warehouse.  This would allow the organization to change processes as they build the system closely matching organizational objectives.

3. Discuss the findings of Ariyachandra and Watson (2006) regarding the success of each data warehouse architecture.