You’re Our DQ Manager, Now Raise the Titanic!

Dylan Jones of DataQualityPro, in a recent post cited a job description for a Data Quality Director that cited 17 keys areas of responsibility across 4 functional areas.  The JD made no mention of of the enormous support team that would be required to help this leader, now matter how energetic he/she might be, complete these tasks.  Without this team, all that this leader would require, as Dylan commented, would be “Powers of Invincibility”.

The trouble with the current approach to data quality is that it calls for, either ever larger teams, or individuals with superhuman powers.  After all, what we are asking them to do is the equivalent of raising the Titanic!

For far too many enterprises, their data is indeed the equivalent of a massive wreck laying on the bottom of the ocean. How did it sink? Everybody is too busy trying to access the sunken data to even think about that.

Because nobody has bothered finding out why the data “sank”, all data newly created in the enterprise has the same flaws as the original and it too sinks to the bottom to join what has gone before.

Amazingly, instead of eliminating these flaws, the majority of data quality effort in enterprises, and the DQ industry as a whole, goes into developing ever more sophisticated dredging methods.  Many of the developers of these techniques are so pleased with their performance and have marketed them so well that many enterprises now believe that a) it is not possible to create data without flaws that will keep it “afloat” or b) it is cheaper to let it sink and then use the “amazing” new tools to recover it, than it is to remove the design flaws.

As long as enterprises perceive it to be impossible to keep their data ship afloat, then any person taking on the roll of Data Quality Director will either have to keep on developing or purchasing ever more sophisticated dredging tools or possess superhuman powers sufficient to raise the Titanic!