Enterprise Architecture

Let’s Break All The Data Rules!

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When I think about data, I can’t help but think about hockey. As a passionate hockey mom, it’s hard to separate my conversations about data all week with clients from the practices and games I sit through, screaming encouragement to my son and his team (sometimes to the embarrassment of my husband!). So when I recently saw a documentary on the building of the Russian hockey team that our miracle US hockey team beat at the 1980 Olympics, the story of Anatoli Tarsov stuck with me.

Before the 1960s, Russia didn’t have a hockey team. Then the Communist party determined that it was critical that Russia build one — and compete on the world stage. They selected Anatoli Tarsov to build the team and coach. He couldn’t see films on hockey. He couldn’t watch teams play. There was no reference on how to play the game. And yet, he built a world-class hockey club that not only beat the great Nordic teams but went on to crush the Canadian teams that were the standard for hockey excellence.

This is a lesson for us all when it comes to data. Do we stick with our standards and recipes from Inmon and Kimball? Do we follow check-box assessments from CMMI, DM-BOK, or TOGAF’s information architecture framework? Do we rely on governance compliance to police our data?

Or do we break the rules and create our own that are based on outcomes and results? This might be the scarier path. This might be the riskier path. But do you want data to be where your business needs it, or do you want to predefine, constrain, and bias the insight?

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Services and disservices – 5: Social example

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Services serve the needs of someone. Disservices purport to serve the needs of someone, but don’t – they either don’t work at all, or they serve someone else’s needs. Or desires. Or something of that kind, anyway. And therein lie a huge range of…

Services and disservices – 5D: Social example (Implications for EA)

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Services serve the needs of someone. Disservices purport to serve the needs of someone, but don’t – they either don’t work at all, or they serve someone else’s needs. Or desires. Or something of that kind, anyway. And therein lie…

Services and disservices – 5C: Social example (Media-examples 6-9)

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Services serve the needs of someone. Disservices purport to serve the needs of someone, but don’t – they either don’t work at all, or they serve someone else’s needs. Or desires. Or something of that kind, anyway. And therein lie…

Services and disservices – 5B: Social example (Media-examples 1-5)

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Services serve the needs of someone. Disservices purport to serve the needs of someone, but don’t – they either don’t work at all, or they serve someone else’s needs. Or desires. Or something of that kind, anyway. And therein lie…

Top 5 Data Architecture Challenges

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I’ve just read this interesting article from Ron Huizenga in the IRM Newsletter about the top five Data Architecture Challenges. The challenge areas discussed are: Evolution of methodologies & culture Adapting to changing architecture Complex data environments Data quality Business focus

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Services and disservices – 5A: Social example (Introduction)

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Services serve the needs of someone. Disservices purport to serve the needs of someone, but don’t – they either don’t work at all, or they serve someone else’s needs. Or desires. Or something of that kind, anyway. And therein lie…

Is Zombie Data Taking Over?

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It is easy to get ahead of ourselves with all the innovation happening with data and analytics. I wouldn’t call it hype, as that would imply no value or competency has been achieved. But I would say that what is bright, shiny, and new is always more interesting than the ordinary.

And, to be frank, there is still a lot of ordinary in our data management world.

In fact, over the past couple of weeks, discussions with companies have uncommonly focused on the ordinary. This in some ways appeared to be unusual because questions focused on the basic foundational aspects of data management and governance — and for companies that I have seen talk publicly about their data management successes.

“Where do I clean the data?”

“How do I get the business to invest in data?”

“How do I get a single customer view of my customer for marketing?”

What this tells me is that companies are under siege by zombie data.

Data is living in our business under outdated data policies and rules. Data processes and systems are persisting single-purpose data. As data pros turn over application rocks and navigate through the database bogs to centralize data for analytics and virtualize views for new data capabilities, zombie data is lurching out to consume more of the environment, blocking other potential insight to keep the status quo.

The questions you and your data professional cohorts are asking, as illustrated above, are anything but basic. The fact that these foundational building blocks have to be assessed once again demonstrates that organizations are on a path to crush the zombie data siege, democratize data and insight, and advance the business.

Keep asking basic questions — if you aren’t, zombie data will eventually take over, and you and your organization will become part of the walking dead.

To defend your business from zombie data, read:

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The New Needs of Digital Business

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Digital business requires change across a very wide range of areas. There is an increasing use of storage, vastly expanded networking requirements, and a rise in the virtualization of all equipment. Digital systems deployed on the network can be replicated, modeled, and situated anywhere, so we have seen virtual networks, virtual servers, virtual mobile solutions, …

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The New Needs of Digital Business

by

Digital business requires change across a very wide range of areas. There is an increasing use of storage, vastly expanded networking requirements, and a rise in the virtualization of all equipment. Digital systems deployed on the network can be replicated, modeled, and situated anywhere, so we have seen virtual networks, virtual servers, virtual mobile solutions, Read more

Services and disservices – 3: The echo-chamber

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Services serve the needs of someone. Disservices purport to serve the needs of someone, but don’t. And therein lie a huge range of problems for enterprise-architects and many, many others… This is the third part of what should be a six-part series…