Be Honest...

How many of you have altered the content of a data set?  Formatting?  Created a new rule because of how an operational system worked?  At the time, were you thinking that it only a few records and the issue would get addressed next time you needed the data set?  Then you did it again, but for more records?  Then again, for even more?   

What happens next?  The quick work around has become part of the process, only it takes more and more time to complete because there’s always more data.  I am going to argue that fixing something on the fly to get to a quick resolution is not a resolution, it is a problem that manifests and spreads throughout the data ecosystem. 

Managing data requires discipline.  Managing data requires oversight.   Data governance provides that oversight to enable consistency in data management methods and processes while providing usage guidance and communication to end users regardless of their role.  A little bit of effort in establishing that oversight can go along way to reducing the work around chaos most users experience.

Me?  Guilty as charged.  I manually re-formatted 10 fields to get the desired outcome.  Then I had to do it again.  The next data set had 32 and I wasn’t going to do it 64 times or even worse, expect someone else to know what I had done manually (or even at all).  So, I paused, fixed the issue, and now it is corrected before an end user would ever know there could be a problem.  My point?  Don’t let your organization get caught up in the culture of quick fixes that are often more costly in the end.  Strategize about your data, manage your data, govern your data.