Comments on: The Top 3 Things That Derail All Database Projects

By: Kyle

Kyle — Fri, 08 Jun 2012 14:55:00 +0000

Our company has a problem with “executive buy-in”. In project management class in college (20 years ago) one of the first things on the list was getting buy-in from the people at the top, the people paying for the project. If you don’t have that when the project completes, and its the IT group rolling it out instead of mandidated from the top down, you’re going to have a real problem getting everyone else to buy-in.

By: Chris Bell

Chris Bell — Sun, 03 Jun 2012 20:00:00 +0000

Ah, blamestorming. Been there many a time. The problem I have is being the one suggesting a solution, but because things are in the state they are, no one ever listens until it is too late.
I’m going through this right now with a 4 month deadline looming and rather than the developer team working with the data team as, we offered, they decided to go their own route. All I could do was document the issues we as a data team foresee, prepare ourselves, and see how it plays out. It gets very frustrating when you are trying to prevent the blamestorm from happening. Guess there is no real way to control the weather of a project eh?

By: Something for the Weekend - SQL Server Links 01/06/12

Something for the Weekend - SQL Server Links 01/06/12 — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 09:05:15 +0000

[…] The Top 3 Things That Derail All Database Projects – Simply just thinking about these things is winding me up and I bet you’ve experienced some of them first-hand too. Thomas Larock (Blog|Twitter) discusses. […]

By: sqlrockstar

sqlrockstar — Wed, 30 May 2012 21:02:49 +0000

In reply to Peter.

Peter,

Great point there, trying to build something based upon “what if” rather than trying to solve a problem, can lead to poor outcomes as well.

By: Peter

Peter — Wed, 30 May 2012 20:52:00 +0000

Well, if someone asked me to make a DB blue, I think I’d have to respond that Mauve has more RAM.

One thing that may fit under the unmanaged requirements is the desire to have the world in the first release. That could be a warehouse that holds every part of the system, a fully detailed model for everything we could potentially do int he next 2 years, or some other “start big” proposal. While that doesn’t necessarily doom a project to failure, it definitely invites scope creep and tends to lead to “one more thing”.