A new business intelligence solution can potentially replace all of the historical data mining, analysis, and reporting methods that are used in your organization. Many users will adopt the new BI solution and abandon the old querying methods seamlessly. Other users will need some transition time. They might need to learn the new BI software and the new data warehouse while still producing reports. This learning period will require a parallel adoption where your old data warehouse and your new data warehouse continue to be maintained.

For the IT department this means an increased workload while the old data warehouse is being phased out. The timeline for this varies depending on the amount of data that you handle and the size of your organization. During this period I recommend establishing some “ground rules” for how you plan to proceed. You will need to take the users’ needs into consideration while also managing your workload.

Here are some suggested techniques or “ground rules” for parallel adoption.

• Continue to maintain the old data warehouse but do not make new additions or enhancements to it.
• Begin migrating reports from the old database to utilize the new BI solution.
• Set a tentative date to officially discontinue the maintenance of your old data warehouse.

Be sure that your users understand your parallel adoption plan, and the reasons behind your decisions.  They will need to take part in this process by reproducing their current reports using the new system.