Project Sponsor. Every data warehouse initiative has a Project Sponsor—a high-level executive who provides strategic guidance, support, and direction to the data warehousing project. The Project Sponsor ensures that project objectives are aligned with enterprise objectives, resolves organizational issues, and usually obtains funding for the project.

Chief Information Officer (CIO). The CIO is responsible for the effective deployment of information technology resources and staff to meet the strategic, decisional, and operational information requirements of the enterprise. Data warehousing, with its accompanying array of new technology and its dependence on operational systems, naturally makes strong demands on the physical and human resources under the jurisdiction of the CIO, not only during design and development but also during maintenance and subsequent evolution.

Project Manager. The warehouse Project Manager is responsible for all technical activities related to implementing a data warehouse. Ideally, an IT professional from the enterprise fulfills this critical role. It is not unusual, however, for this role to be outsourced for early or pilot projects, because of the newness of warehousing technologies and techniques.