Wednesday, April 26, 2006

1:15 pm - 2:15 pm

Level: Intermediate

This presentation focuses on how we found measurable success at PeaceHealth after what might have appeared to be failures in the areas of standards, metadata, data modeling, and the overall process of the Data Warehouse project flow. We look at why having a large vision is important, but what it takes to make progress. Specifically why the vision of an Information Directory was too large, and how we were able to do a phased approach by:

• Capturing metadata
• Writing good definitions
• Going against expert advice
• Adding technical information
• Adding source and examples to the metadata
• Creating an abbreviations & acronyms database

We will look at:

• How we incorporated areas from the original vision, such as capturing metrics, in phased approaches
• Why standards weren’t working and how we have now achieved success and the key reasons why
• How we evolved with a project template and why timing is important
• Why we created a “BRD” to address each Data Warehouse project and what it looks like
• How we are using data modeling today
• How we re-directed our goals and ended up back on the right path after making mistakes
• How a governing body manages the work of the Data Warehouse team and why this is so successful
• How we are making Data Warehousing work at PeaceHealth

Theresa Fletcher is a Data Warehouse Developer for PeaceHealth, a healthcare organization that operates facilities in Alaska, Washington, and Oregon. She has worked in Healthcare of over 15 years and has her AA degree in Computer Science and Bachelor of Science degree in Management Information Systems (MIS). Prior to working as a Data Warehouse Developer, Theresa worked as a Data Architect implementing processes to define metadata and make it available to customers, creating and maintaining new standards, data modeling, and creating a new business requirements methodology process. Before that she worked as an Interface Analyst and worked as a project and team lead as well. She has served on the Portland DAMA Chapter Board for the past 2 years as the VP of Education.