Have you ever been brought in on a project that is in the middle of implementation? While I consider this scenario to be BIG FUN, you may not. Here is why:

1. The data architecture has been decided upon and probably approved for design.
2. The solution may have been designed (e.g. reporting or auditing) and approved for implementation.
3. Tools have been selected (ETL, reporting and analytics, dashboards, data quality/profiling, data modeling, database).

If this happens to you, you may feel LOST and a bit disconnected from the mainstream project. If so, ask some of the following questions:

1. How much can we deviate from the data architecture diagram? Who created the DA diagram? Who do I talk to about efficiency of the processes?
2. Is the end solution considered a standard at this company?
3. What tools are considered standards at this company? (You may find that they have more than one ETL tool, reporting/analytics, data quality/profiling and database that are considered corporate standards)
4. Who is doing the data profiling of the data? What data quality or cleansing are we trying to achieve? (If this I left out – who do I talk to about this?)
5. When is the project due for test? When is the project due for production?
6. Where is the data model?
7. Where is the scope and requirements document?
8. And last but not least, who can give me an overview of the project?

While feeling disconnected is awkward, using some of the questions above will get you up to snuff pretty fast.