Tag Archives: business glossary
Seven Reasons Why Using a Spreadsheet for a Business Glossary Won’t Cut It
A number of customers have asked me recently about the benefits of using a business glossary product over using a spreadsheet or Sharepoint. The discussion is worth sharing.
If you have a smaller company and all you need is a list of standard business terms to provide a common business vocabulary across the company, a spreadsheet or Sharepoint can work, …up to a point. The problem is that once your organization reaches a certain size, you are going to have trouble scaling the management of the business terms, making them available across a larger organization, and fostering collaboration based on the agree-upon business terms. (more…)
The Architectural Scope of Data Governance
It’s important to note that I didn’t title this post “Implementing a Data Governance Architecture”. Data governance is not a technology space, tool – or architecture. As our data governance framework illustrates, tools and architecture represents but one of many facets needed to support an enterprise data governance competency. But once you’ve defined your vision and business case with a clear approach for managing the people, process and policy facets, technology can play a significant role in determining the ultimate success or failure of your data governance efforts. Complex and poorly integrated current state architectures present a significant obstacle to applying common standards for the delivery of trusted and secure data across the enterprise. Data architects play a pivotal role in enabling data governance by designing and evangelizing the data management reference architecture to support data quality and privacy requirements. In addition, these architects must recommend enabling technologies to support data governance and stewardship workflows that aid the core processes of discovery, definition, application and measurement and monitoring (Stay tuned – I’ll be sharing a lot more about these core data governance processes in a future post discussing the “Defined Processes” facet of our framework). Whatever you do, don’t fall into the all-too-common IT trap of selecting the tools before the goals, strategy and processes of data governance are in place. If you skip these steps and just try to build it, they (‘the business’) most assuredly will NOT come. (more…)
The U.S. Supreme Court: Owners of the Constitutional “Business Glossary”
Any personal opinions on the health care mandate being irrelevant; I can’t help but be amused by the liberties taken by both major political parties on the definition of a “tax.” When Chief Justice Roberts’ gave the majority opinion that the individual health insurance mandate was constitutional under Congress’ power to tax, the political spin doctors went into overdrive. Everyone on both sides is simultaneously agreeing it is and is not a tax in order to promote their agendas – and has managed to confuse the heck out of the American public in the process. (This ABC News story prompted me to write about this).
I bring this up here because this national debate on the constitutionality of “Obamacare” and the definition of what constitutes a tax is no different from many of the politically-charged debates occurring within your organizations with passions running equally high and confusion reigning supreme. (more…)
Big Uptick in Customer Metadata Projects
I have seen a big increase in the use and interest of Informatica Metadata Manager and Business Glossary in the past year. Lots of people are doing serious development work with metadata.
It shouldn’t have been a complete surprise then, but I was still amazed by the huge increase in interest in metadata at this year’s Informatica World in Las Vegas. It all started with one of our pharmaceutical customers winning an Informatica Innovation Award in the opening session. The next morning, a session that they hosted (which was great) was standing room only, and we actually had to turn some attendees away. We were sorry to do that, but it was a strong signal of the growing interest and use of metadata. (more…)
Using Metadata To Manage Data Integration Change
Last week, a long-time Informatica customer told me about how he is managing change in his data integration environment on a truly massive scale. The story he told reminded me of someone doing a heart transplant on themself while running a marathon. … blindfolded.
- First, he is delivering several innovative new applications. One to improve customer service. Another, proactively monitors operational performance and suggests where the business needs to invest more to improve their capacity and service levels.
- Next, he is rolling out new systems that will collect customer sentiment analysis from social media sources (Big Data) and integrate that with ongoing campaigns and company planning. (more…)
Who Needs Metadata?
Consider this situation: Would you try to ride a bicycle blindfolded? You could probably pump the pedals and steer without trouble, but you would be lacking the visual feedback that the changes you are making in direction and velocity will keep you on your intended course and avoid harm.
This question undoubtedly sounds crazy, but people are making changes to their data integration environments every day without the tools in place to visualize the environment and to tell them the impact of proposed changes.
There are good tools available today to help with this problem.
Metadata Management