Roger Nolan
Enterprise Application Projects Are Much Riskier Than You Think
IT application managers are constantly going through a process of integrating, modernizing and consolidating enterprise applications to keep them efficient and providing the maximum business value to the corporation for their cost.
But, it is important to remember that there is significant risk in these projects. An article in the Harvard Business Review states that 17% of enterprise application projects go seriously wrong; going over budget by 200% and over schedule by 70%. The HRB article refers to these projects as “black swans.”
How can you reduce this risk of project failure? Typically, 30% to 40% of an enterprise application project is data migration. A recent study by Bloor Research shows that while success rates for data migration projects are improving, 38% of them still miss their schedule and budget targets.
How can you improve the odds of success in data migration projects?
- Use data profiling tools to understand your data before you move it.
- Use data quality tools to correct data quality problems. There is absolutely no point in moving bad data around the organization – but it happens.
- Use a proven external methodology. In plain English, work with people who have “done it before”
- Develop your own internal competence. Nobody knows your data, and more importantly, the business context of your data than your own staff. Develop the skills and engage your business subject matter experts.
Informatica has industry-leading tools, a proven methodology, and a service delivery team with hundreds of successful data migration implementations.
To find out more about successful data migration:
- Informatica World: Visit us at the Hands On Lab – Data Migration.
- Informatica World: Informatica Presentation on Application Data Migration.
Application Data Migrations with Informatica Velocity Migration Methodology
Friday June 5, 2013 9:00 to 10:00
- Informatica World: Data Migration Factory Presentation by Accenture
Accelerating the Power of Data Migration
Tuesday June 4, 2013 2:00 to 3:00
- Bloor White Paper: Lower Your Risk with Application Data Migration: Next Steps With Informatica
- Informatica White Paper: De-Risk Your Application Go Lives
Modernizing or Rationalizing Your Application Portfolio? Don’t Neglect the Data Migration
When executing application modernization or application rationalization your focus is on supporting the business strategy by implementing systems that run critical business processes. And that is exactly where the focus should be.
The problem comes when there is a lack of focus on delivering trustworthy data for those business systems and processes. If you are consolidating enterprise applications or upgrading to new enterprise applications, the data needs to be migrated from System A to System B. This is virtually never a simple “cut & paste.” In fact, data migration projects can be fairly risky. Bloor Research has found in their latest study that 38% of these projects fail. Even worse, the Harvard Business Review reports that 17% of enterprise application projects go over budget by 200% and over schedule by 70%. There are many examples of this. The State of California has terminated their contract with their ERP vendor after spending $254 million. The U.S. Marine Corps has spent $1.1 billion on another ERP system, 10 times its original estimated cost.
So, how do you deliver the business value that your users demand? Here are four best practices to help you to deliver applications on-time and on-budget that meet the user’s needs for timely, authoritative data.
- Have an internal competence in data migration. This is a best practice identified by Bloor Research in their study on data migration. You can’t simply turn this project over to a third party. Only your staff truly knows your internal data. Another thing to consider is that your staff will also have to operate the new applications after go-live (see #4).
- Have a separate data migration team and budget. Bloor Research also recommends a separate budget and team. This is to ensure that there is a strong focus on data migration and quality and that it doesn’t become just a project detail in the larger application installation. Bloor found a very high likelihood of project failure if there is not a separate budget.
- Make sure that your business users are deeply involved. The Bloor survey found that by far the #1 success factor identified by their respondents was “Business engagement.” Unless the business side is deeply involved in requirements definition and providing business context there is a significant risk of misunderstandings that will result in a system that does not meet the needs of its users.
- Consider the new system go-live as the beginning, not the end. We have seen many organizations that view data migration as a “one-and-done” project where everybody packs up and goes home at the end of the project. An enterprise application is a living, breathing, system that needs continuing care and feeding. Once the application goes live, you will need to provide services such as: ongoing data quality management, synchronization with other operational systems, and synchronization with a master data management hub if you have one.
For more information:
Live Webinar with Philip Howard of Bloor Research. May 20, 2013. Successful Application Go-Lives: Best Practices for Application Data Migration
Application Data Migration Presentations at Informatica World 2013. We will have a Hands-On Lab and data migration presentations from Accenture and National Oilwell Varco.
Bloor White Paper: Best Practices for Data Migration
Informatica Solution Site: Data Migration Solution
Data Governance for Big Data: It’s Even More Critical Now
Big data and related technologies such as Hadoop present significant opportunities and challenges to businesses. Nearly everybody in IT reports that they are actively evaluating big data technologies. And, just as you would expect, they are in a variety of stages of implementation. So, who has time to think about data governance when dealing with a massive change like this?
First, you have to get your hands around the new technology, right? Actually, this is exactly the right time to think about data governance for big data; before the wild, untamed data from outside the company starts getting mixed with your potentially more trustworthy, tamed, internal data. (more…)
Seven Reasons Why Using a Spreadsheet for a Business Glossary Won’t Cut It
A number of customers have asked me recently about the benefits of using a business glossary product over using a spreadsheet or Sharepoint. The discussion is worth sharing.
If you have a smaller company and all you need is a list of standard business terms to provide a common business vocabulary across the company, a spreadsheet or Sharepoint can work, …up to a point. The problem is that once your organization reaches a certain size, you are going to have trouble scaling the management of the business terms, making them available across a larger organization, and fostering collaboration based on the agree-upon business terms. (more…)
Who Needs Business Metadata?
One sign that the practice of metadata management is maturing is that we are seeing it cross over from IT to the business side of enterprises, and with it the rising need for business metadata. This is core to any successful Data Stewardship or Data Governance initiative. But first, what is Business Metadata? (more…)
Ten Ways to Drive the Success of Your Metadata Initiative
We’ve all seen examples of metadata management and data governance initiatives that have failed. A number of customers have asked me about best practices for driving successful metadata initiatives.
Some are looking to grow their use of metadata beyond an IT productivity project into something larger such as a data stewardship or data governance initiative. Some are just getting started. In either event, here are my top ten recommendations based on conversations with customers and some of the great presentations and panel discussions at Informatica World. (more…)
Big Uptick in Customer Metadata Projects
I have seen a big increase in the use and interest of Informatica Metadata Manager and Business Glossary in the past year. Lots of people are doing serious development work with metadata.
It shouldn’t have been a complete surprise then, but I was still amazed by the huge increase in interest in metadata at this year’s Informatica World in Las Vegas. It all started with one of our pharmaceutical customers winning an Informatica Innovation Award in the opening session. The next morning, a session that they hosted (which was great) was standing room only, and we actually had to turn some attendees away. We were sorry to do that, but it was a strong signal of the growing interest and use of metadata. (more…)
Even ‘The Most Interesting Man In The World’ Won’t Do This…
“I have taken risks in my life………but I always validate my data before updating my production systems. Stay employed my friends!”
I am hearing an increasing number of customers tell me that they either do not have time to do data validation or reconciliation testing on their nightly updates to production systems, or that they can only test a part of the data. In the latter case, they have to “guess” which parts of the data have the most business risk and therefore deserve their testing time and resources. It doesn’t have to be this way. Informatica Data Validation can be used in production environments. The really good news is that data validation testing can be run at night from a command line script or in a workflow. The load of data into production systems can be made to be conditional on successfully passing all the tests. Customers can also build in automatic notification of the test results so that they know the status of their production systems.
Validating Data for Production Environments
The BBC published a news story where a teacher in India looked at his bank account expecting to see a balance of $200 only to find that the balance shown was $9.8 billion (480 billion rupees). Imagine that surprise!
These types of stories appear in the news on a regular basis, and the question they raise is this: How could an error of this magnitude have happened and what could have been done to prevent it? (more…)
Using Metadata To Manage Data Integration Change
Last week, a long-time Informatica customer told me about how he is managing change in his data integration environment on a truly massive scale. The story he told reminded me of someone doing a heart transplant on themself while running a marathon. … blindfolded.
- First, he is delivering several innovative new applications. One to improve customer service. Another, proactively monitors operational performance and suggests where the business needs to invest more to improve their capacity and service levels.
- Next, he is rolling out new systems that will collect customer sentiment analysis from social media sources (Big Data) and integrate that with ongoing campaigns and company planning. (more…)
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