Prime Data Consulting Blog

Sitting around with some developers recently and I asked why they were hesitant to embrace data governance. They acknowledged that there was good to be gained from it, but they felt they would be too constrained if they had to follow a bunch of governance rules. A woman in our group stated that they sounded like her teenagers, they understood her rules, but did not like to follow them. It really gave me a reason to pause and think about what she said and how it applies to data governance. Was the resistance due to our industry being at a relatively low level of maturity? Read the rest of this entry »

Recently someone asked me, “What is Prime Data and how does it relate to data governance?”  It is a good question because many people struggle with deciding what data needs to be governed and Prime Data helps reign in the scope of governance efforts. Actually, the term first started out as key data suggested a former co-worker. That was a hard-sell for me due to the fact the word key has such specific meaning in data circles.

I preferred and still prefer prime, or primary data. This is data that is almost ubiquitously used at the organization such as customer data, product data, or account data. If you apply the 80/20 rule, then 80% of your systems have this data, and it represents less than 20% of all of your data. It includes most of the Master Data plus the other commonly used fields needed for both operations and analysis. Read the rest of this entry »

Often the argument against standardization and data governance centers on not wanting to hobble the creativity of the application developer. The perception seems to be that in allowing the creation of customized data elements and data models, developers build a better application. In reality, the application comprises only one part of the entire information system and the customization adds tremendous overhead increasing total cost of ownership.

There are numerous examples in other industries and trades with some degree of standardization where creativity flourishes. Artists, designers, and photographers are both creative and adopters of a widespread standard. The Pantone® standard for colors allows the creativity to flourish by elimination of the problems of color matching and color management. Once the decision for a given color is made by artist, the color management standard allows efficient matching and reproduction. Read the rest of this entry »