Data before delivery: putting the cart before the horse?
I have now heard dozens of stories from friends and colleagues about failed BI and analytics initiatives. They range in costs from hundreds of thousands to tens of millions of dollars. It’s a problem that I see several companies at risk of repeating…and the motivation for today’s blog. A common thread to most of these stories is trying to “fix up our data before we select or implement an analytics tool”. How can anyone possibly understand the data needs, the use cases, and the possible data issues without providing a means to use the data, view the data and identify issues? It’s like trying to anticipate what part of a car a mechanic should fix without test driving it first. Consider starting with the data you have, take it for a test drive. See how the business wants to use it and evolve your data quality and architectural initiatives incrementally. You’ll realize value on the way and better focus your efforts. Why do they fail? Lack of focus: Hyped up terms like “big data”, “data lakes” and “cloud” distract us from the pragmatic task of delivering information — getting reliable, current information into the hands of business users in a form...