Spot on! and fully agree with Rob’s comment. Technology is only one (possibly small) part of the overall data quality solution. You need to stop the sources of poor quality data (i.e. people and processes) before you get too involved in cleaning the data.

Julian

You got it, keeping up with the business with business value is far better than keeping up with the Jones’s.

PS: Don’t sing Jim’s song, it gets stuck in your head if you do!

Charles, another great post… reminding us that we are focused on solutions, not feature function mapping to technical issues.

I do not want to be that HoIM with the story’s feature function slide deck.

Now with MDM 2.0 or 3.0 or infinity… the changing dynamics of the business, our challenge is keeping up with them, with business value…

Thanks for your comments. Tying in with what Rob said, you need technology to provide the capability to solve a problem, but you need that common sense dimension that drives your decisions.

Thanks again

Charles

Thanks Jim, highlight of my week!

And to end it off with the perfect phrase “Focusing on the technical features and ignoring the business benefits isn’t going to provide the solution that the enterprise needs.” is just class.

“HoIM and the Data Dwarfs”

***

Heigh-ho, Heigh-ho
It’s off to work we go
We’ll mine the data asset the whole day through

Hi HoIM, Hi HoIM
How’s the business case go?

Heigh-ho, Heigh-ho
It’s back to work we go
We dig up data quality problems by the score
A thousand defects, sometimes more
But we don’t know what we dig them for

Hi HoIM, Hi HoIM
Thanks for the shiny new tools
The bells and whistles sure are cool
When all these powerful features peak
We’ll be happy little data mining geeks

Heigh-ho, Heigh-ho
It’s back to work we go
Heh, where’d the business case go?

HoIM? HoIM?
Oh, well – I guess we can forget about him

Heigh-ho, Heigh-ho
It’s home from work we go

***

The moral of the story is:

“Focusing on the technical features and ignoring the business benefits isn’t going to provide the solution that the enterprise needs.”

Some good points here, I realy like the idea of ‘partnering’ with the C level executive.

Re the graphic, I bought it from a site called fotolia.com, thought it was worth paying for

More often the problem is a people and process issue that technology is helping facilitate the solution. If a data professional’s pitch to the C level executive focuses solely on the new shiny then they are likely missing out on 80% of the problem. It is the data professional’s responsibility to partner with and sometimes convince the C level executive around the idea of people and process in order to gain the momentum needed to enact change in the organization.

Lastly, I love the image for this post. Where did you find it, if I may ask.

Rob

Always good to get a view from either side, and even better when it can come from the same guy!

Maybe we should market a ‘requirements gathering’ peace pipe …