Influence of brokering in Data Warehouse projects

Data Warehouse (DWH) projects bring together different communities of practice to create one body of knowledge and help increase companies’ competitive advantage. In this paper we argue that a “communities of practice” perspective can better envisage the problems often surfacing during the requirements elicitation in DHW development by drawing attention to the processes on the borders between involved communities. To investigate these phenomena more closely, exploratory, open interviews were conducted with experienced DWH-professionals developing DWHs for diverse business domains. Based on the results gathered, we argue that brokers have to be considered as relevant facilitators of the requirements elicitation process in any DWH project.