Data warehousing is failure prone......or is it not?

I often critisize vendors and others for not being thorough enough. Now it's time to critisize science....

In several papers I am reading at the moment (ranging from MIS Quarterly, Information & Management, Decision Support Systems and many more journals) I encounter something similar.

Please read the following quotes:

"....the road to DW success has been littered with failures [43,63,80]"
"....nearly half of all DW initiatives end up as failures [38]"
"According to a press release 2005 by Gartner: through 2007 more then 50% of data warehouse projects will have limited acceptance, or will be outright failures."

The above quotes I got from one paper in one paragraph in Decision Support Systems (paper is from 2008 - very recent), which is an important journal in our field of expertise. Since I encounter these statements over and over again, I decided to follow up on the citations.

Let me begin by dismissing the quote refering to Gartner's press release. That's not really a sound scientific basis.....So we are left with two more quotes.

[43] C.Hall Corporate use of data warehousing and Enteprise Analytic Technologies, Arlington, Massachusets, 2003 URL: www.cutter.com
Ronald: can not validate the information. You need to buy a report......

[63] S.Kotler When enterprise hit open road: move beyond the silos and let the idead roll, Teradata Magazine 3 (3) 2003
Ronald: I read this article...now it becomes shocking. Let me quote this article:

"According to a recent article in Information Week, “41% of all companies surveyed by the Cutter Consortium, an IT consultant and market analysis firm, have failed data warehouse projects, and only 15% call their data warehousing efforts to date a major success.”

Ok....this citation is actually referencing the first one [43] (I think...can't access it). We got a loop here....

[80] M.Quaddus, A.Intrapairot, Management Policies and the diffusion of DWH: a case study using dynamic based decision support systems, Decision Support Systems 31 (2) 2001, 223-240
Ronald: ok, this is becoming complex. I quote this paper:

"..quite a few DW projects end up in failure even before full implementation owing to lack of immediate substantial economic returns on massive investment [24,25,67]"

So a citation is used in a paper that refers to a claim in another paper but with different citations (you guys still with me here?). So we end up with three more citations which are off course even further in time, let's examine these:

[24] R. Hackathorn, Data warehousing energises your enterprise, Datamation 41 (2) 1995. 38–42
- I could not find this article, so I was not able to validate the claim that was being made. It sounds to me like some sort of column though. But again - can not validate.

[25] C. Horrock, Making the Warehouse Work, 1996, available from http://www.computerworld.comrsear . . . -htm1r9606r960624DW1SL96dw10.html.
- I could not find this article, so I was not able to validate the claim that was being made.

[67] The Siam Commercial Bank’s Staff, Data Warehouse Questionnaire and Interview, (6 January–28 February 1998). Personal Communication.
- I could not find this 'article', so I was not able to validate the claim that was being made.

[38] L.Greenfield, The Data Warehousing Information Center www.dwinfocenter.org, december 19, 2003
Ronald: This is a link to a whole site.......oh my, how on earth can you make a reference to a whole site??

To summarize things; I was not able to establish any (empirical) evidence that would support the claim made in the paper of DSS (and in several other papers as well) - which is by the way quite a recent paper (2008). Somehow we are being made to believe that Data Warehousing are failure prone. I challenge anyone to deliver some real (empirical) evidence. As for now - I suggest we all use caution in communicating that Data Warehouse undertakings tend to fail a lot.

On the subject, there is one interesting piece of paper from TDWI, written by Hugh J.Watson (I think in 2006) that seems to be relevant and hitting the nail on the head by saying - and I quote:

"The data suggests that whether data warehouses are failure-prone depends on one's definition of "failure." Varying with the architecture implemented, there is approximately a 32-47 percent chance that a warehouse will be behind schedule, and a 30-43 percent chance that it will be over budget. However, this does not mean that the warehouse will not succeed. By a more global measure of success, only 10-20 percent of warehouses are potentially in trouble, while the others are either up-and-coming systems or runaway successes"

Ronald: And yes, Watson is using an empirical basis.