My New Year Data Quality resolutions for 2010

Because we all know that if we write it down and publish it for all to see we will have a much better chance of success! So here they are:

1. ‘Communivate’ quality issues to a much broader audience – no more suppressed results – ever!
2. Establish employee Data Quality performance targets – for ALL employees. (This could be a multiyear task however since it’s a big challenge it will be lots of fun to do)!
3. No more Mr. (Ms.) nice guy – those of you who know better yet keep causing Data Quality issues beware! I have stats on you! Fear me!! ...or maybe I’ll just nicely advise them that I can help them get ready for the soon to be established performance targets – see item #2.
4. Establish measures and track success of how well our IT project processes are following the supposedly integrated information management protocols – I know it’s not my job to do but sheesh, nobody else is doing it dammit!
5. Communivate results to the broad audience (see item #1)
6. Obtain agreement from ‘informal’ data stewards (those that I have established relationships with after stalking for months on end...) to partner with us DQ folks and develop some agreed upon roles and responsibilities. (These will become part of the employee performance targets.)
7. Take ‘quasi’ business sponsors to task for not doing what they said they would do (also part of the employee performance targets).
8. And last but not least, I also hereby promise to swear less often, or perhaps more quietly, when hitting the roadblocks that stand in the way.

I can’t wait to reward myself...

‘We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year's Day’. ~Edith Lovejoy Pierce~

All I want for Christmas is..

Dear Santa:

I hope you are well. I have been very good this year (don’t listen to the rumours) and would appreciate the following for Christmas:
1. A business sponsor – so when I find a problem that requires a business decision or communication I don’t waste 3 weeks (and I don’t come cheap!) trying to find someone who cares.
2. Data Stewards – who are measured on how they manage the data they are accountable for.
3. Integration of our Data Management Software – so we can match and enhance at the source of data input rather than performing it after the fact.
4. IT best practices – where every IT project includes data profiling.
5. Complete Business Requirements – these would include:
• The identification of the Stewards for the related data and processes
• Data Definitions
• Business Rules
• Governance processes
• Stakeholders
• Business Purpose of data
• Quality requirements for data
• Training requirements related to quality of data
6. Comprehensive Benefits Realization – where costs associated to managing data re-actively are identified
7. Corporate Training for new employees that includes Data Quality best practices
8. Accountability for those who know better yet still create bad data
9. Employee Performance Measures that include at least one objective related to quality of data
10. Effectively communicated and measured corporate policies and procedures related to quality of data

I know I’m asking for a lot, but if you could do this for me I promise it will improve the satisfaction of our customers, reduce our operating costs and make me one seriously happy camper.

Thanks very much,
Sincerely,
Jill

Ways to 'Communivate' your Data Issues

Part 1 of:
The Purple Cow approach to Data Quality
Or: How to have fun while trying trying to jump data quality sponsorship hurdles
Or: how to use innovative communication tactics to reach your Data Quality objectives.

‘Communivate’ is a combination of the words communicate and innovate, and it means to communicate in an innovative way. Our team uses it a lot to describe how we get our message across. We are one of those insane teams (aka Sneezers ) who constantly push the boundaries of ‘appropriate’ tactics to get the job done, and are always coming up with new terms to describe our approaches. (Makes me wonder if coining new terms is a DQ thing?)

Background
I am responsible for implementing a Data Quality (DQ) program and I have no business sponsor. As a result, my team and I put an enormous amount of effort into achieving the following:
· Raising awareness
· Communicating poor DQ issues
· Stalking (did I say stalking?) I meant to say identifying and engaging business stakeholders
· Developing business cases to educate business and IT on best practices
· Getting buy-in

Essentially, we collect a lot of data and share it with whoever will listen. And because we don’t have that essential business sponsor, we need to communicate over and over (and over) the same messages to various stakeholders. It can get tiresome [insert shot of Dracula sucking enthusiasm out of lifeless body here] after a while…

So, here is one example of how we communivate,
Goal 1: Raise Awareness
The Strategy? Find a Captive Audience.
Since we don’t have a business sponsor we don’t have the same corporate tools to spread the word. Internal intranets, team portals and corporate newsletters are all off limits, so instead we took the message to the people. Because we’re sneezers, we wanted to push the boundaries and have fun. The team printed off screenshots of seriously bad data and posted them (under covert secrecy – more sneezer fun) on the doors of washroom stalls. You could not get a more captive audience than that.
The results? We ran this campaign 4 times over a 1 year period and by the end of the year our communivative strategy AND the message we were trying to achieve was mentioned by a Senior VP in a corporate communication, we received 57 positive (and I tree hugging negative) comments and another Senior VP asked us when our new campaign was going to start. (Ok, they still are not sponsoring us but they do like us, so one thing at a time..).

Awareness raised, goal achieved.