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Challenges when exploiting and managing data

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areas, the use of some spreadsheet-based tools for manipulating data and interfaces with other corporate systems that do not function perfectly. In such cases, the machine that you imagine to represent the way that your organisation exploits data will be more like the types of machine imagined by the artist William Heath Robinson in the early 20th century: complicated, inefficient, tenuously held together and lacking proper documentation.

Whilst you perhaps visualise your data machine as being closer to the latter, how would the senior leaders in your organisation view it? If they have recently invested in enterprise software tools, then they could believe that the ‘data machine’ is a single, efficient entity, when in reality there are a number of data quality issues arising from data migration problems, interfaces that do not function correctly and so on.

This analogy illustrates how organisations can have an unrealistic perception of the way that they process and exploit data, believing them to be far more coherent and efficient than they actually are. Later in this book we define approaches to help provide structure and definition to your ‘data machine’.

Do your data trust you?

You could ask (or be asked) the relevant question: Do you trust your data? What if you were to turn this question on its head? This leads us to think about the issues from the perspective of the data, that is if I am a data set can I trust the people who handle me to do the right thing with or to me? Do your data trust you? This can be another way of illustrating the importance of managing data correctly.

The data set’s view

It’s taken me a long time to get to where I am. I started small and now I’m so big that people often refer to me as ‘big data’. I still, however, have my needs and the same aims in life: I want to be reliable, dependable, available and adapt to change; I don’t necessarily want to be perfect, but fit for your use; I don’t want to be too needy and expensive to keep, otherwise you would archive or replace me.

Please remember, if you treat me well I will be faithful and true. Treat me unkindly and I will do whatever I can to make your life frustrating. Just think what I could do if I ever get to drive vehicles for you!

If you remove my competition, I promise I will be stronger; I do not like to share the limelight with inferior spreadsheet copies of me. If you put garbage into me, then I won’t be happy and will only send even more garbage back at you.

If you care for me, then I will never become out of date; I have the ability to change if you allow me to. If I change, however, I want to be sure I’ve changed for the right reasons and not just because you think I will look better if I was different, or that I will fit into your perceived view of me. After all, I am what I am and we will work together better if we fully understand each other.