Tag Archives: Data Governance

The Practical Metadata Business Case

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Even now the business case for a metadata tool seems unclear and difficult to quantify, but it isn’t impossible.

We in the data management business tend to devalue solutions that don’t clearly derive from a coherent top-level view. We seek applications defined from an enterprise architecture, database designs from an enterprise data model, and data elements consistent with the enterprise business glossary.

However, sometimes tactical gains make sense even when the big picture is missing, and tactical successes of metadata for analytics teams can raise consciousness that helps set the stage for evolving data management improvements. Continue reading →

Data Quality, Evolved

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Data quality doesn’t have to be a train wreck. Increased regulatory scrutiny, NoSQL performance gains, and the needs of data scientists are quietly changing views and approaches toward data quality. The result: a pathway to optimism and data quality improvement.

Here’s how you can get on the new and improved data quality train in each of those three areas: Continue reading →

A New Direction for Data at #EDW17

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Obviously, data management is important. Unfortunately, it is not prioritized in most organizations. Those that effectively manage data perform far better than organizations that don’t. Everyone who needs data to do his/her job must drive change to improve data management.

That was the theme of the recent Enterprise Data World (EDWorld) conference this week. This year’s EDWorld event might be the start of a new vitality and influence for the field, marked by introduction of a Leader’s Data Manifesto.

Over the years, data practitioners struggled for recognition and resources within their organizations. In reaction, they often focused on data “train wrecks” that this neglect causes. This year’s conference was no exception. For example: Continue reading →

Levels of Trust in Data Governance: It’s Not All or Nothing

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The term “trust” implies absolutes, and that’s a good thing for relationships and art. However, in the business of data management, framing trust in data in true or false terms puts data governance at odds with good practice. A more nuanced view that recognizes the usefulness of not-fully-trusted data can bring vitality and relevance to data governance, and help it drive rather than restrict business results.

The Wikipedia entry — for many a first introduction to data governance — cites Bob Seiner’s definition: “Data governance is the formal execution and enforcement of authority over the management of data and data related assets.” The entry is accurate and useful, but words like “trust”, “financial misstatement”, and “adverse event” lead the reader to focus on the risk management role of governance.

However, the other role of data governance is to help make data available, useful, and understood. That means sometimes making data that’s not fully trusted available and easy to use. Continue reading →

Five Thoughts On Data Management Maturity

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StaircaseRecently I’ve had the opportunity to dig deeply into the CMMI Data Management Maturity model. Since its release, the DMM model has emerged as the de facto standard data management maturity framework (I’ve listed other frameworks at the end of this post).

I’m deeply impressed by the completeness and polish of the DMM model as a comprehensive catalog of processes required for effective data management. Even after decades in the business the broad scope and business focus of the model changed the way I think about data management.

Here are my impressions collected under five distinct categories. Continue reading →

Manage DATA, People, Process, and Technology

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dataA quick Google search seems to reveal if you manage People, Process, and Technology you’ve got everything covered. That’s simply not the case. Data is separate and distinct from the things it describes — namely people, processes, and technologies — and organizations must separately and intentionally manage it.

The data management message seems a tough one to deliver effectively. Data management interest groups have hammered at it for years, but a sometimes preachy and jargon laden approach relying on data quality train wreck stories hasn’t generally loosened corporate purse strings. Yes, financial companies’ data-first successes in the 1990s paved the way for the ’00s dot com juggernauts, whose market capitalization stems largely from innovative data management. Yet, we still have huge personal data breaches at some of our most trusted companies, and data scientists spend the bulk of their valuable time acquiring, cleaning, and integrating poorly organized data.

The first steps are often the hardest, so here’s a short, no jargon, big picture guide to getting started with effective data management in three steps:

Continue reading →

A Field Guide to Overloaded Data

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BugAt the very first TDWI Conference, Duane Hufford described a phenomenon he called “embedded data”, now more commonly called “overloaded data”, where two or more concepts are stuffed into a single data field (“Metadata Repositories,” TDWI Conference 1995). He described and portrayed in graphics three types of overloaded data. Almost 20 years later, overloaded data remains rampant but Mr Hufford’s ideas, presented below with updated examples, are unfortunately not widely discussed.

[Note: in March of 2021 I added one further category, bundling. – BL]

Overloaded data breeds in areas not exposed to sound data management techniques for one reason or the other. Big data acquisition typically loads data uncleansed, shifting the burden of unpacking overloaded fields to the receiver (pity the poor data scientist spending 70% of her time acquiring and cleaning data!)

One might refer to non-overloaded data as “atomic”. Beyond making data harder to use, overloaded data requires more code to manage than atomic data (see why in the sections below) so by extension it increases IT costs.

Here’s a field guide to three different types of overloaded data, associated risks, and how to avoid them: Continue reading →

Guiding Principles for Data Enrichment

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The data integration process is traditionally thought of in three steps: extract, transform, and load (ETL). Putting aside the often-discussed order of their execution, “extract” is pulling data out of a source system, “transform” means validating the source data and converting it to the desired standard (e.g. yards to meters), and load means storing the data at the destination.

An additional step, data “enrichment”, has recently emerged, offering significant improvement in business value of integrated data. Applying it effectively requires a foundation of sound data management practices.  Continue reading →

Data Management: So Easy a Caveman Can Do It?

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I recently stumbled upon one of The Martin Agency’s hilarious Geico caveman ads and wondered, rather geekily, why they didn’t do one about data analysis. I think if a caveman suddenly arrived in the 2010s he or she would see parallels between his life and the activities of today’s knowledge worker. When I thought it through, it seemed obvious that knowledge workers need to be more like farmers and less like hunter/gatherers if they want to achieve the full potential of business intelligence.

Continue reading →

A New Framework for Data Management?

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HubAndSpokeI hold a strong prejudice that IT paradigms are useful for about 30 years. The PC was dominant from 1980 to 2010, “online” mainframe systems from 1970 to 2000, and so on. If that’s the case then time’s up for Bill Inmon’s data warehousing framework. So far no widely held pattern has emerged to help us envision data management in today’s big data, mobile BI, end-user visualization, predictive analytics world, but at their recent Business Technology conference, Forrester Research took a swing at it by presenting their 2009 “hub and spoke” organizational strategy as a data management vision. Continue reading →