We are at the threshold of the most significant changes in information management, data governance, and analytics since the inventions of the relational database and SQL. Most advances over the past 30 years have been the result of Moore’s Law: faster processing, denser storage, and greater bandwidth. At the core, though, little has changed. The basic […]
Mind the Gap: Assessing Data Quality Readiness
This is the second in a two-part series exploring data quality and the ISO 25000 standard. OK. You’re with the program. You recognize that having quality data is important for accurate AI models. You would even concede that it’s important for other stuff too, but whatever, because AI is getting all the attention right now. […]
Mind the Gap: Did You Know About the ISO 25000 Series Data Quality Standards? Me Neither
This is the first in a two-part series exploring Data Quality and the ISO 25000 standard. In the 1964 dark comedy Dr. Strangelove, or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Bomb, General Jack D. Ripper orders a nuclear strike on the USSR. Despite efforts to recall the bombers, one plane successfully drops a […]
Mind the Gap: R.I.P. Data Governance
This is the first in an ongoing series exploring reimagining data governance. Happy New Year, and welcome back to Mind the Gap. OK, enough pleasantries. Recently, I’ve been thinking about the following observation: Many, if not most, organizations have been struggling with the same information management and data governance challenges for decades. Certainly, we’ve seen traction in some […]
Mind the Gap: Architecting Santa’s List – The Naughty-Nice Database
You never know what’s going to happen when you click on a LinkedIn job posting button. I’m always on the lookout for interesting and impactful projects, and one in particular caught my attention: “Far North Enterprises, a global fabrication and distribution establishment, is looking to modernize a very old data environment.” I clicked the button […]
Mind the Gap: Migration Projects – Gaining Traction or Spinning Your Wheels
Hardware and software migration projects are like crack for IT executives. Especially when the number on the new invoice is smaller than the number on the old invoice. Even better when the products can be folded into a previously negotiated enterprise agreement and made to appear free. Add to that an audience with the vendor […]
Mind the Gap: Ask for Business Actions, Not Business Value
I’m not sure I know anyone in the data and analytics field whose platform doesn’t face budget scrutiny. Analytics is expensive. And when cost-cutting is the order of the day, analytics is a big target. Up shields. Time for another business value inventory. I’ve spoken with consultants who have completed analytics business value inventories at […]
Mind the Gap: Start Modernizing Analytics by Reorienting Your Enterprise Analytics Team
… and your data warehouse / data lake / data lakehouse. A few months ago, I talked about how nearly all of our analytics architectures are stuck in the 1990s. Maybe an executive at your company read that article, and now you have a mandate to “modernize analytics.” Let’s say that they even understand that just […]
Mind the Gap: Data Quality Is Not “Fit for Purpose”
Welcome to the latest edition of Mind the Gap, a monthly column exploring practical approaches for improving data understanding and data utilization (and whatever else seems interesting enough to share). Last month, we explored the rise of the data product. This month, we’ll look at data quality vs. data fitness. Everybody likes a pithy definition. Marketers describe […]
Mind the Gap: The Product in Data Product Is Reliability
Welcome to the latest edition of Mind the Gap, a monthly column exploring practical approaches for improving data understanding and data utilization (and whatever else seems interesting enough to share). Last month, we explored analytics architecture stuck in the 1990s. This month, we’ll look at the rise of the data product. It wasn’t so long ago […]