by Chris McCauley on January 31, 2007 – 7:55 am
I wanted to follow up on my comments about technical versus business metadata and had intended to make this article about metadata, but instead I’m going to kill two birds with one stone and talk about approaches to matching. Why? Well recently I found myself getting dragged into a very old argument about Probabilistic versus Deterministic matching. Normally I’m very happy to get into any techie argument and the more pointless the better, but this one has been done to death so I feigned ignorance and escaped with a new idea for a blog entry.
The argument was about whether a deterministic or probabilistic approach to matching is better. After six years in data quality technology, I’m happy enough to argue for either approach and given a strict choice between “A” and “B” can make a convincing case for option “C.”
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by Larry English on January 11, 2007 – 1:58 pm
By this time, most of us have already broken the New Year resolutions that we have made. Whether or not this has been your case, let me propose a “better-late-than-never” resolution that can make all the difference in your own career:
Seek out one of your internal “Information Customers,” someone who depends on the information you create, whatever it is. Ask them how well the information meets their needs to perform their work properly the first time. Is it complete? Is it accurate? Is it timely? Is it presented clearly and understandably?
If it does not meet their needs completely, analyze the root cause. Hint, ask “Why?” five times to get back to the root cause. Then analyze and improve the process causing the missed requirement in a way to prevent future recurrences.
Having done this, you will probably have “delighted” your Customer, encouraging them to do the same.
PS: Document the impacts of the improvement in terms of saved time and materials and other costs of “information scrap and rework” you will have accomplished.
This is how you can change your company forever, one improvement at a time.
What do you think? Let me hear from you about your experience.
