Problem management is an area that needs to be clearly defined and documented. It is vital that all administration staff know who, where and when to call if problems arise. It is common to have several groups inside an organization responsible for different parts of the data warehouse. There may be a central helpdesk for application, tool or PC problems, while operations are responsible for the hardware and a separate DBA team is responsible for the database. Everyone from the users through to the developers and operators needs to know who to call.
This whole area of problem management needs to be bottomed out early in the data warehouse project. The environment and the applieation will be complex, and everyone involved in supporting the system or supplying a help service will need to be identified and trained.
