by Angela Guess
A recent article looks at how many business intelligence problems stem from a lack of data governance. The article states, “An often-heard reason for dissatisfaction is that the developers of BI applications are not connected with the users. The obvious remedy is: 1) development should take place close to the users and 2) developers should listen carefully to the requirements of the users. Yes, this as a little bit too obvious; and some pundits take this further and state that developers who don’t listen to users should be banned from IT. I admit that obeying this advice will take away some of the pain experienced by the users. However, I’m convinced that the root causes are deeper under the surface and more difficult to address. In my opinion, two issues are ultimately responsible for the majority of all problems with BI.”
The article goes on, “The first issue, which has nothing to do with BI as such, is the lack of ownership of data, nowadays called lack of data governance. In my opinion, this is the root cause of nearly all problems with data quality. And lack of data quality in transactional data, master data and formulas counts for a major part of the effort necessary to bring data in good order from source systems to BI applications. Data governance is an issue that should be owned and driven by the business, but for a variety of reasons (e.g., politics, complexity, inadequate IT support) it does not get the attention it deserves. The second issue typical for BI is the pace and degree of change, which is much higher than IT support for operational processes. And IT is, in general, not sufficiently equipped to have an answer for the challenges caused by this level of change. There are two areas where IT is not up to the mark.”
photo credit: Jim_K-Town
