by Angela Guess
Jim Harris recently commented on the quest to find an MDM silver bullet. He begins, “Lycanthropy is the ability of a human being to transform into a werewolf, a legendary beast possessing superhuman strength and senses – but also a cruel and inhumane thirst for brutal violence… According to the myth, a werewolf can only be killed by a silver bullet, a legendary technology, which has become a metaphor for any simple solution to a complex problem.”
Harris goes on, “Master data management (MDM) also has many of its own myths and legends (perhaps most notably The Quest for the Golden Copy), including its own form of lycanthropy, wherein although it is the humans who are bitten, they are not the ones who transform. MDM is often transformed into a legendary beast when its implementation complexity is revealed (perhaps by the light of a full moon). When we allow an MDM implementation to morph into a monster, we start believing in the magic of finding a legendary technology — we start believing a silver bullet is the only thing that can save us.”
Harris quotes David Loshin who recently blogged about the search for a silver bullet in MDM, stating that when “the technology has been positioned as a silver bullet solution, the general expectation is that the result of an MDM project is complete visibility into all aspects of the selected master data domain (e.g., customer or product). However, the goal is to identify what master data is needed and how it is used to meet a specified business goal. Then figure out a plan for technology acquisition in support of the business process improvement.” Harris concludes, “Although an MDM implementation is a complex challenge, it’s not a legendary beast that can only be killed by a legendary technology. There is simply no silver bullet for MDM — and that’s no myth.”
photo credit: Gabriel.Lascu
