Aspiring Tendencies in Information Management

8/3/2019 Aspiring Tendencies in Information Management

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Aspiring Tendencies in

Information ManagementData Warehousing and Decision Support

Martyn Richard Jones-Lovering

2012


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Aspiring Tendencies in Information Management 2012 2

Foreword

This whitepaper is one of a series offered bycambriano energiaas a service to our client and associate

network.

This paper addresses a wide range of topics in information management, and in particular topics

that are important to strategic Data Warehousing and Decision Support (business intelligence, data

analytics, and data mining and visual representation)

Whilst intentionally ironic, polemic and provocative, the purpose of this document is serious. There

are justifiable trepidations, doubts and frustrations; concerns for the wellbeing of Information

Management; initial fears that anything can be done to remedy its flaws, shortcomings and insidious

influences; accompanied by the perception that IM is being appropriated by dogma, fantasists andopportunists.

This paper came into being as a means to discuss the issues of dereliction, deception and

inexperience in Information Management, to restate that IM is a useful, valuable and timely

organisational discipline, and to inform organisational IM strategies going forward.

For more than a decade Information Management in general and Data Warehousing and Business

Intelligence in particular have been ripe for a wake-up call.

The need for clarity, integrity and rectitude has reached levels that are intellectually impossible to

ignore without further destroying the credibility of Data Warehousing and Decision Support. IfInformation Management experts and professionals do nothing to clean up IMs act, we will only

have ourselves to blame. If we work on this problem together; strategically, coherently and with

determination, then the rewards will come.

The proposition is that we reclaim professionalism, coherence and veracity for Information

Management, and that we are resolute and tenacious in our attempt to claw back more than a

semblance of competence, lucidity and integrity.

So, without more ado, here is a selection of motivational, partisan and polemic sketches indicating

what, in my humble opinion, should be done to address some of the more prescient, pertinent and

aspiring questions in Information Management.

Martyn Richard Jones-Lovering

Bamberg, January 2012


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Contents

INTRODUCTION 4

1. STRENGTH AND INNOCENCE 6

2. THE CONTRIBUTION DEFICIT 7

3. REHABILITATING DW 8

4. VISIBLY DECISIVE BI 9

5. EVOLVING RATIONAL DESIGN 10

6. DATA INTEGRATION FOR ADULTS 11

7. EXCLUSIVE TANGIBILITY FETISH 12

8. INFORMED PEDAGOGY 13

9. UTILITY, TIME AND PLACE 14

10. EMINENT HISTORIES 15

11. PHILOSOPHY OF INFORMATION 16

12. FALSE GREENING OF IM 17

AFTERTHOUGHTS

ACRONYMS


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Introduction

For decades, organisations have been moving away from traditional function-based business

structures, with their attendant silos of competence, overlapping roles and artificially limited

responsibilities, to highly focused business-driven process models.

Today, we recognise that well-bounded business process reengineering is a critical success factor in

contemporary business strategies, and new ways of looking at processes are being explored and

introduced in order to bring about far greater levels of simplicity, improvements in supplied service

and in continuous advances in product quality. This has also lead to new-found process robustness,

greater customer intensity and intimacy, and sea-change improvements in the ways that forward-

looking organizations do business.

As part of this information trend, organisations are transitioning to service-oriented business-process

operating platforms. These new platforms can be used to capture and store a wide range of data,

way above and beyond legacy in-house applications and 3rd party applications, such as traditional

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP).

New levels of process abstraction mean that businesses can essentially record every step, state and

decision point in a business process flow, from initiation to closure, which allows organisations to

closely monitor business activity, service levels and indicators right down to the finest level of

granularity and across the entire business landscape. Businesses can now look at who does what,

when, where, and how, which allows for more focused questions to be asked, the accurate

pinpointing of process hotspots and process bottlenecks, and the initiation of more concentrated

corrective measures.

The separation of operational support and strategic decision support is being blurred. Suddenly

senior management can really have their finger on the business pulse; the modelling of the digital

nervous system now promises to become a reality, and we are moving boldly forward into the

realms of business intelligence that will not only tell companies what they have done wrong in the

past but will support decision-makers in formulating endearing and persuasive strategies for the

future of organizations. What senior executive could possibly turn down the opportunity to be on

top of all the key aspects of the business that they are responsible for?

Well, thats the theory, now get prepared to meet the reality.

There are twelve main sections to this whitepaper; each one represents a topic of which we basicallyask: i) where do we want to go, ii) where are we at now, and iii) how can we try and get to where we

need to be:

1. This is a brief look at how ignorance and hubris is tormenting the InformationManagement profession.

2. In which we contemplate the idea that some IT organisations have been a continuous let-down, who time and time again have snatched defeat from the jaws of victory; whilst

lamenting their bad luck, their misfortune and the utter unfairness of it all.

3. Lets take another great initiative and remake it in our image arguing that we shouldreclaim the kind of data warehousing that actually benefits organisations that actually want

to use it.

4. Getting BI right amidst a shark-pool of charlatans, snake oil merchants and thaumaturgy.


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5. How to overcome the damage that slash and burn raiders have done to the evolving datawarehouse paradigm.

6. When data integration initiatives go wrong; again, again and again.7. When tangibles are not enough, and when the nonsense gets too much.8. How to evolve an educated profession, allure suitable candidates and provide continuous

education9. Answering the question of who does what, where and why? Thinking globally,

benefitting locally.

10. Quality in data, for data and with data. Touching on the finer dimensions of data quality.11. Thinking of Information. The time and place for best principles, proven practices, data

models and process models, structures, reference architectures and methodologies.

12.The false greening of IM. From trash to treasures; everything indexed, everyone connectedand everything on.

Information Technology in general and Information Management in particular have come to

represent an obnoxious facet of mercenary and predatory behaviour.

Earned income should go hand on hand with a good job, done well; the market success of an

excellent product sold at an affordable price; and, just rewards for a project well thought out,

planned, executed and delivered. It shouldnt be pile it high, mark it up, maximise profits, rip-off

the customers (until they get to like it, then do it even more), sell overpriced crap that people dont

need, and to hell with the outcomes and the deliverables.Getting companies hooked on bad technology is like getting people hooked on drugs, or corporates

hooked on bad strategy, and the DW and Decision Support market has been flooded with

technology crack.

Take a simple example. Once a new tech user opens up a revenue stream for one of the dealers,that revenue stream will just get bigger and bigger until someone decides to cut the flow, go into

rehabilitation or to simply move to another dealer.

But, thats more than enough of an introduction. The following sections are written to incite

thought, discussion and discourse. But more than anything else, they were written like the best of

Data Warehousing and Decision Support to stimulate and incite leadership and management

action.


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1.Strength and InnocenceAnger is the enemy of nonviolence and pride is a monster that swallows it up.

Mohandas GandhiAspirational trends

The predominance of strength and innocence, better known as ignorance and arrogance, is

undermining Information Management, and in turn is ensuring that many Data Warehousing and

Decision Support initiatives are disappointments.

2012 will give IM professionals the opportunity to regain some dignity and professional integrity.

First, by recognizing that there are grave problems within IM; then slowing down and halting the

toxic trends, carelessness and bad practices; and subsequently, reversing, through intelligence,

perseverance and integrity, the ingenuous and decrepit habits that trouble the profession.

Present indications

In the rush to the bottom we throw excellence in analysis, architecture, engineering and business

understanding, under the bus. In IM as well as in many other branches of IT (Information

Technology), mediocrity has become the new excellent, regular the new exceptional, and

shoddiness the new normal.

Whether it is in Data Warehousing, Decision Support or Data Integration, we see that professional

integrity and ethical behaviour already enough of a rarity in IT - is being repeatedly trumped by

short-term expediency, wilful witlessness, and the cultivation and perpetuation of dogmas,dysfunctional behaviour and dubious doings.

The Information Management sector is rife with elaborate charlatanry, partisan expediency and

wilful self-deception. There is not a day that goes by in which we are not submitted to an avalanche

of contemptible claims from rogue IM evangelists, DW neophytes and unsophisticated

opportunists, who chose to simplymake things up as they go along.

Manifest requisites

It is in the best interests of IM to raise the profession out of the ditch; to reform the profession

from the inside; to drive sea-change improvements in knowledge, quality and professional integrity;to ensure a drastic reduction in destructive hype, deception and dogma, and, to show the artless

charlatans, chancers and snake-oil merchants the door.

Data Warehousing and Decision Support - if done right, and for the right reasons - can deliver

tangible benefits to many organisations. Simply stated, if business information has a value in the

realm of business and strategy then it should be treated as an asset, if it is an asset then it should be

managed and nurtured as such, which means aiming to do the right thing right, first time, every

time, whilst focusing on maximising confidence, availability and agility.


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2.The Contribution DeficitWe can spend our whole lives underachieving.

Phil CrosbyAspirational trends

2012 should be a year in which hard-nosed reassessment are made of what exactly Data

Warehousing and Decision Support mean, and more to the point, what is the difference between a

Data Warehouse and the corporate data equivalent of a junk shop full of fake junk.

2012 should be the year in which DW and Decision Support are freed from the deep-rooted

dysfunction of far too many IT shops.

Present indications

IT has spent more than four decades in knowingly perfecting the inability to understand the needs

of business.

Many IT organisations have manifestly failed to understand data warehousing and decision support.

Many IT organisations do not even bother to gain a perfunctory grasp of DW, assuming that two

and a half ideas and a generous budget is enough. This is still a sizeable tendency within IT.

Many IT organisations are so averse to the needs of business that they become self-fulfilling

prophecies in isolation, marginalisation and alienation. Many Data Warehouses are built without

any deference to the business, and people wonder why these pre-emptive initiatives are always

disasters.

Many IT organisations are reacting to criticism by shifting the responsibility for much of IT to third

party suppliers and the low-cost vendors, who, whilst not being able to provide the competence or

the quality, do so at a margin of the price; even if the economics make absolutely no business sense

at all.

Manifest requisites

Its time that CEOs woke up to the way IT takes great and proven ideas, and then kills them;awoken to the IT Contribution Deficit; to the dismal history of corporate IT, to the vagaries and

vices of technology, and told what really can be done, why it might be done, and who can really

provide value, benefits and answers.

IM professionals should be in the vanguard of change in the way that senior managers view DW.

Its time that people stopped selling out the best principles and practices of DW in order to turn a

fast buck, and took more interest in establishing professional integrity within the realm of

Information Management.

DW professionals should show courage and empathy as well as intelligence and conviction in

recovering the business of IM for the benefit of organisations and especially for all the people who

have a stake in them.


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3.Rehabilitating DWNo legacy is so rich as honesty.

Will iam ShakespeareAspirational trends

This is the year in which IM professional reclaim the principles of well architected and well-

engineered data warehousing based on sound information management principles and driven by

clear business imperatives.

Data Warehousing is going through an evolutionary process, with DW 2.0 and the management of

unstructured data leading the way. New developments in the scope and reach of DW will ensure a

solid framework for the next generation of organisational data warehousing. In this respect, DW

2.0 continues to be a solid basis for successful DW, DSS and KM projects aimed at meetingevolving and maturing business requirements for actionable data and decision support.

Present indications

If electrical engineering were DW, then recognition of a Philips screwdriver would be the unique

requirement for admission into the EEEI. Fortunately for that august institution this is not the

case, but for professional DW practitioners, thats how bad it has become.

Designing a star schema and building a data mart is not data warehousing, doing thistwenty times or more, is not data warehousing.

Dumping data in a quiet area for people to run reports against is not data warehousing. Putting big data onto a cloud and allowing unstructured queries to run against that

unstructured data, is not data warehousing.

Many people who have an opinion about data warehousing dont actually have anyknowledge and experience of working on successful data warehouse implementations.

Manifest requisites

Its time to get back to basics (subject oriented; integrated; time-variant, non-volatile; iterative;

support for strategic decision making, etc.) and its time to get up to speed with the "architecture

for the next generation of data warehousing" DW 2.0TM1, including the recognition of the lifecycleof data within the data warehouse; the incorporation of unstructured data along with structured

data; the correct capture and positioning of Metadata locally and globally; Master Data

Management; and, the need for integrity of integrateddataand the need forOLTPdata.

Its time to take back DW, and disassociate the term from each and every cowboy project and each

and every unskilled bodger. Its about time that the charlatans of DW were given the red card, and

sent to an early bath. Its about time that DW was given a makeover and recovered from the

clutches of the willfully gormless and the craven.

1 DW 2.0 is a trademark of Bill Inmon


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4.Visibly Decisive BI"It's not hard to make decisions when you know what your values are."

Roy DisneyAspirational trends

In 2012, the world will wake up to the fact that BI is more than just seeing your data on a

dashboard or in a report, and that BI is about more than just finding 1,001 ways of slicing and

dicing data, or about playing with your pie charts, drill-downs and pop-ups in the shower - on the

move or in the rest room of the Dorchester - but that it is essentially about Decision Support.. DS

which includes, but is not limited to: quantitative analysis, qualitative analysis, predictive analytics,

situational analytics, intelligent explanation, knowledge management, data mining, data visualisation,

corporate performance management and elements of complex event processing.

Present indications

One of the problems with BI, as with many aspects of IT, is that it tends to appear with a strong

odour of arrogance and ignorance. How IT has the brass neck to tell business that BI will help

them do a better job, make better decisions or get it right has never failed to astound,

especially considering what an underwhelming success that business IM has been over the last two

decades.

The world of BI in 2011 was marked by an elephantine surge in marketing hype and invective.

Witless evangelists of inedible BI dog food crowded the professional social networking scene,

heaping one absurd claim on top of another. Claims and counterclaims flew like so much detritushitting the fan, and yet, in this perpetually autistic corner of IT, very few seemed to really want to

address the fundamental needs of business.

Throughout 2011, companies continued to be suckered by what amounts to little better than

business oriented vacuous tosh that focused on the retentive needs of amateurs and the collusion of

the powerful, contented and wilfully insentient. For as harsh, polemic and abrasive the comments

may be, the facts are there, as large as life, to support the observations.

Manifest requisites

In the spring of 2012 we may come to realise that BI is essentially about decision support. In the

summer of 2012 we may come to realise that the best place for strategic advice on business

intelligence is not to be found on unmoderatedopen social or professional forums or with tool

vendors, but, with people who have a record of success in DW and Decision Support.

The job of IM, like the job of IT, should be to assist the people in the enterprise in achieving its

strategic, tactical and operational objectives; of contributing the alignment of strategy and prevailing

forces; of managing the balancing act between needs, quality and resources; of identifying new

opportunities in all potential and new areas, and of consolidating what needs to be consolidated.

IM should be a major weapon in the decision makers toolbox, but no one should pretend that the

tool is the decision maker or that the tool will lead to better decisions, but instead could lead to

better informed decisions and to richer avenues of exploration.


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5.Evolving Rational DesignA superior man is modest in his speech, but exceeds in his actions.

ConfuciusAspirational trends

2012 is the year in which we rediscover the need to be able to warehouse not only highly structured

data, but far more complex structured, some of which is so complex in structure and semantics that

it is easier to label in laypersons terms as unstructured data.

In order to extend data warehousing into the realms of coherent explanation and knowledge

management, the industry will embrace the content and concepts of DW 2.0, and link highly

structured data directly to highly reusable unstructured data.

Present indications

One of the malignant trends in more than twenty years of Data Warehousing has been the way that

this well architected and practical answer to the decision support needs of organisations has been

continually subject to misinterpretation, misalignment and misattribution.

Individual and commercial expediency crashed landed onto the DW bandwagon in the hope of

benefitting from an already moving trend. The DW paradigm was hacked-up in order to try and fit

selective parts of it into peoples preconceived ideas of what reporting databases should look like.

DW became what anyone wanted it to be; a dumping ground for data, a data mart, ten data marts, a

host of data siloes; 20 terabytes and not a byte of intelligence; it was anything goes, and it did.

It didnt matter that a Data Warehouse was not subject oriented, or that the data was integrated or

cleaned, or that the data retained could not be used to reproduce accurate snapshots over time, or

that the database was volatile. For many, it was enough to simply apply a new label, and their data

doghouse would be turned as if by magic - into a fully-fledged data warehouse.

Manifest requisites

Industry analysts such as Gartner Group and Forest Rim Technology estimate that over 80 per cent

of corporate data can be considered unstructured. This unstructured data includes emails,

voicemails, search engine data, Microsoft Office suite documents (Excel, PowerPoint, OneNoteand Word) and many other formats that are not kept in traditional database systems.

2012 will see the strong upward trend in demand for unstructured text processing tools and

techniques, as more and more organisations begin to understand the potentially rich seams of

valuable information that has previously remained untapped and locked within complex or

unstructured data.

As an aside, in the field of comprehensive risk management, cambriano energa is advancing its

research and development in areas of contextual explanation as well as carrying out investigation

into leveraging the KM with DW 2.0.


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6.Data Integration for AdultsWhy, a four year old child could understand this. Run out and get me a four year old child

Groucho M arx Aspirational trends

2012 will be the year in which even the most obtuse of IT organisations will gradually begin to

understand that there is a substantial difference between data integration and enterprise

application integration; data migration; data transformation; data replication; and, a bolli-stoli.

Present indications

When it comes to data integration, many corporations are more permissive and irresponsible with

data than some people are with well, there are many valid comparisons.

Why are companies content to go on working with dirty data? Well, the truth is that they arent. But

in many companies, this dirty little data secret is kept a secret by well, guess who? Does the

acronym IT ring a bell?

Another blind-side of many corporations, some of them quite large, is that their IT departments

refuse to recognise the move from old fashioned batch processing and near-batch time transaction

management to a situation where corporate transaction and message data will flow in near real-time

mode.

What is one of the first things that IT departments do when they hear the term Data Integration apart from rushing to goggle it? Thats right. Many IT departments consider Data integration to be

synonymous with ETL (Extraction, Transformation and Loading), and even more curious, that

anything ETL must necessarily be data integration, data warehousing or manna from heaven.

In many instances data integration initiatives are embraced with little understanding of what is

actually involved in data integration, and with scant or no regard for data governance. Many IT

organisations cover up their ignorance and arrogance when it comes to data integration with weasel

words such as data integration is different here, our data integration needs are different and

we dont use the same terminology.

Manifest requisites

A coherent, cohesive and comprehensive data integration competence should be a part of the

strategy of any business that relies on data to gain, retain and sustain business with its clients and

preferred suppliers.

Enterprise Data Warehousing is one pillar of a comprehensive strategy for corporate data

integration, along with other key data integration elements, such as Master Data Management, Meta

data management, Customer and Product data integration, corporate data quality assurance and

corporate data governance.


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7.Exclusive Tangibility FetishThe novelties of one generation are only the resuscitated fashions of the generation before last.

George B ernard Shaw Aspirational trends

2012 will be the year in which more and more people will come to the realisation that technology

alone is not the answer to the needs of Data Warehousing and Decision Support.

2012 will be the year in which the major vendors stop touting their technology as if was a universal

panacea for all Data Warehousing and Decision Support needs.

Present indications

Tools are tangible and intelligence is not, and people have an interest in ensuring that the two are

tangled. The point is not that people understand DW and apply it; the point is to sell it.

If professional soccer were like DW we would be informed that its not the knowledge, skills and

effort of great players and teams that count, but the boots. This is what we do in IM, Never mind

the team, just take a look at those boots! How many people have responded to the DW equivalent

of we play Chelsea next week, any tips? with buy adidas, push the envelope or flip a

Frisbee?

If health care systems in any modern state were run like IM, malpractice lawsuits would be piled

high; there would be no diagnosis, prognosis or prescriptions; and people would be mistreated.

Simply stated, DW is awash in a sea of nonsense. Much of DW is baloney promoted by vendors,

perpetuated by the misinformed, prostituted by artless product /service evangelists, and consumed

by the nave and lazy. Its not their fault, they know no better. But, its still toxic and malignant

nonsense, and it HAS TO GO!

At the services end of the spectrum, answers are even more fast, flatulent and bizarre. Cries go up,

put it in the cloud, get big data, virtualise it, socialise it, star schema with circled cubes.

In the midst of all the chattering, foolishness and tat, there is a dissolute group of opportunists.

They dont have a clue about the significance of their slogans, the business that they pretend to be

in, or of the businesses that they pretend to help.

The IM meltdown was to be expected; its a side-effect of the system of vacant, of 24/7/52

foolishness to go, of thrilling labels stuck on tat. Whats it all about? Let me see yeah, got it big

cloud, big data, big SaaS, bigboom banga bang on a networking string

Manifest requisites

2012 will herald the beginning of the end of the road for the degradation of DW. People will get

wiser to outrageous claims and crass ignorance. Coherence will be mandatory, visible benefits will

be demanded, visible progress will be required, tangible results will be required. Companies

operating in the DW and Decision Support spaces will either revolutionise their act or leave thestage.


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8.Informed Pedagogy"There is no treasure like knowledge."

Imam AliAspirational trends

In 2012, we will start to treat the Information Management profession with greater respect. This

will be reflected in how we identify, allure, hire, educate and motivate potential Information

Management professionals, and how we ensure continuous learning opportunities.

To use another footballing analogy, trainee IM professionals should be fielded when they are ready,

they should only play in leagues that correspond to their talent, and should only be placed in

positions that they are capable of playing in. This does not mean that a trainee must play as well as

the top players in that position, but they must possess a reasonable level of competence, potentialand aptitude, even if the well-honed skills and deep experience are lacking. Moreover, a player will

always have something more to learn, and something more to impart.

Present indications

Outsourced, offshored and exploitative body shopping has destroyed the best laid plans of people

and projects.

Information Management requires people skills, social skills, an ability to communicate and a

superb ability to active.ly listen. These traits are markedly absent from contemporary information

management, and especially amongst people who are thrown into the deep end of the business,because they are cheap and can be bullied to say and do practically anything no matter how

rubbish the outcomes are, or how duplicitous the aim is.

Manifest requisites

In 2012, with the support of the USA, Brazil, Russia, the EU and China, etc. we in IM would be a

wise to establish an international Information Management Institute, which would be charged with

establishing, maintaining and continually improving professional standards in Information

Management. This institute would receive its funding through sponsorship by customers (through

industry) and tax payers (through government), and it would be charged with creating, evolving and

ensuring standards for IM, of certifying IM professionals and of maintaining a list of qualified IM

practitioners. However, its guidance would come from an elected body of experts who would

make up the governing body. In addition, it would be have the legal basis for providing arbitration

in cases of malpractice claims against individuals and organisations.

The Information Management Institute would provide excellence in IM education, from the basic

and essential skills of how to effectively listen; how to communicate; how to arrive at consensus

and understanding how to empathise; to the high end goal of providing master classes in best

principles in Information Management.


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9.Utility, Time and PlaceThe essence of tyranny is the denial of complexity"

Jacob BurkhardtAspirational trends

We live with what we have, but we also try to avoid stagnation, to improve, and to advance. Each

and every one of us is here because we are part of a long line of survivors, and todays crisis ridden

business world is mainly about survival.

2012 will see organisations investing in the cultivation of local talent, local competence and local

expertise. In 2012 we will realise that certain market dogmas must be trash-canned, before the

potentially disastrous becomes the inevitable.

Present indications

One of the biggest and destructive deceits in the history of Information Management is that IM is

being outsourced and offshored primarily because there are simply not enough or not any local

skills to keep up with burgeoning demand. After many years of following these claims, they have

been found to be frequently and woefully lacking in rigour and honesty.

I once heard Michael Schrage2 discuss an encounter with IT bosses in which he related an anecdote

from his days as a writer. He talked about editors who wanted pieces to be short and succinct, but

who would pay by the word. The connection was made between words of an article and lines of

code, the bottom line being that companies wanted lean code but would insist on paying forapplications based on the number of lines of code written. A few things of note:

1. The corruption of the organization is aided and abetted by the untiring imposition of theerroneous dogma.

2. Companies that are not even transferring their knowledge because it invariably gets lost inthe ether. i.e. Offshoring leads to absolute loss of intellectual capital

3. Outsourcing and offshoring of strategic projects are great for wealth redistribution, foroffsetting tax liabilities, for the provision of charitable aid to developing regions, for

deskilling your in-house development staff, and for abandoning your neighbourhood to

embrace greater income, effective exploitation and for a servile and expendable labour

force - but it also comes with its drawbacks.

Manifest requisites

In 2012, in the case of the EU (and others who would like to do the same), we should see

considerable tax incentives for all organisations that use local skills; Where no reciprocity exists, we

should consider a local skill development tax on the offshoring of all skilled and knowledge

intensive work, and the imposition of additional tax based on the availability of locally skilled

workers; and, in addition we should use taxes raised to partially fund quality technology, process

and methodology training.

2http://blogs.hbr.org/schrage/
http://blogs.hbr.org/schrage/http://blogs.hbr.org/schrage/http://blogs.hbr.org/schrage/http://blogs.hbr.org/schrage/


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10. Eminent HistoriesA writers promise is like a tigers smile

Giles Lytton StracheyAspirational trends

Data used for strategic decision making should be at least as good as the data collected by the

organisation.

Data used for tactical planning should be within the bounds of accuracy required for tactical

decision making, and that no significant blind spots are emphasised or overlooked.

Data for operation decision making must be accurate to the degrees required to ensure that no

customer is lost or that any other significant risks are introduced because of low quality data.

Data quality should be as good as the data quality required to achieve satisfactory outcomes; issues

of data quality cannot be allowed to put the organisation and its stakeholders at any more risk than

that which can be tacitly assumed by the relevant organisational competencies.

Present indications

In many organisations the desired and required quality of corporate data is overlooked.

If restaurants were as lax about their hygiene as organisations are about the quality of their data,

then their kitchens would be filthy and their customers would be dying of food poisoning.

If organisations were as lax about hard cash as they are about data, then people would just be

walking in off the street to help themselves from the corporate piggy bank.

Your customers are in Germany and the customer data is half way around the world, being used to

test some badly designed and cowboy engineered dross that will never work satisfactorily in a

month of Sundays. If corporate data was valued as much as money and other obvious assets, then

this would be classed as criminal negligence, industrial espionage or attempted fraud, and

prosecuted the same way.

Manifest requisites

In 2012, organisations will get wise to the need for a comprehensive overhaul of their

understanding of data quality, data governance and operational risk. Organisations will no longer be

allowed to be free and easywith their data, especially customer and employee data, and IT

organisations will have to fall into line to stop their maverick practices of the past.

Data quality has very little to do with the single version of the truth nonsense, as in not simply

confined to simply the quality of data. Data quality should also be concerned with quality data

structures and the veracity and completeness of meta-data. Most importantly its all very well

cleaning your data, but if your target data model is a dogs dinner then all the previous DQ work

may have just been in vain.


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11. Thinking of InformationI've learned from my mistakes and I'm sure I can repeat them exactly.

Peter CookAspirational trends

2012 the DW and BI community will wake up to the fact that there is a sound body of DW / BI

project best principles, methodologies, business models, reference architectures, technologies and

techniques, and, will embrace the intention of doing the right thing right, first time, every time as

a total quality management facet of future data warehouse and business intelligence initiatives.

Present indications

So, whatever happened to agnostic Data Warehouse development methodologies? As surprising asit may seem they didnt go away, they were buried under a humongous assemblage of DW/BI

trappings, cookbooks, models and commercial detritus, then carried away on a river of corporate

tears3; and whilst this may not be strictly accurate, for all intents and purposes it is.

Back in the last millennium, about twenty summers ago, Bill Inmon, the father of data warehousing,

published what is now described as the DW bible: Building the Data Warehouse. Now in its 3 rd

edition, Inmon explains what a data warehouse is and isn't, why it's needed, how it works, and

how the traditional data warehouse can be integrated with new technologies, including the internet,

to provide enhanced customer service and support. He also addresses the trade-offs between

normalized data warehouses and dimensional data marts. 4

So, why have so many data warehouse projects been resounding failures? There are a number of

reasons:

1. Many failed data warehouse projects were only data warehouse projects in name.2. Data warehouse projects failed to align with the fundamental aspects of a data warehouse.3. The prevalence of the I dont need to understand Inmon in order to build a data

warehouse attitude.

Manifest requisites

In 2012 we have a chance to recover all the effective and proven approaches to DW and BI, and tobuild on those stable structures and techniques. In this respect, many of the other significant

practitioners in BI are contributing depth to Inmon s data warehouse development approach,

whether it is, for example, advanced techniques for data mart design and ETL processing, data

vault modelling5, or implementing compliant reference architectures and industry models.

3 Apologies to Stewart Lee http://www.stewartlee.co.uk/4 http://www.amazon.com/Building-Data-Warehouse-3rd-Inmon/dp/04710813025http://danlinstedt.com/Dan Linstedt, Data Vault Modelling and Methodology
http://danlinstedt.com/http://danlinstedt.com/http://danlinstedt.com/http://danlinstedt.com/


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12. False Greening of IM"I'm normally not a praying man, but if you're up there, please save me Superman."

H omer SimpsonAspirational trends

In 2012 we will wake up the fact that we need to balance impulse, desires and craven follies with

coherency, rationality, business equilibrium, empathy and a healthy concern for energy usage and

the environment.

In 2012 companies should start to ask themselves how environmentally friendly, cost effective and

energy efficient their infrastructure setups for data warehousing and business intelligence actually

are.

Present indications

Is big data really worth the energy needed to use it? Is having your business in Paris, your needs in

Patagonia and your data in Pandora, really worth the cost? Is keeping oceans of data, digitised and

stored, ready and available all year round, year in, year out, really necessary? Are barns of historical

data in OLTP systems really indispensable to all organisations? Do we really need to move so much

big data around, or use the techniques of brute force and witlessness for everything? Is having

idle servers running weekends and out of working hours really saving the planet?

The energy companies will love you for it, but will your stakeholders thank you? Organisations may

like to believe that they are socially responsible, but are you?

Here we are, 24 by 7 by 52, everything indexed, everyone connected and everything on. Bigger data,

more disks, faster disks, more CPUs, faster CPUs, more controllers, faster controllers, more

charging, more heat, more dissipation, more cooling, more searches, more inefficient searches,

more electricity consumed, more electricity generated, more electricity wasted, more oil burned,

more coal burned, more devices made, more basic resources used . Even if the label is green, a

few green boxes and components soon add up to one large consumer of energy. Just what is the

environmental impact of providing technology so that people can spend all day downloading

pornography, pirating movies, betting on sports results and messaging things like WTF!!! RU4RL?!?

LOL, whilst pretending to work?

Every time we read the words cloud computing, big data and social networking, and all the super-

inefficient brute force computing that surrounds these must haves, we should also consider the

environmental impact, and the additional energy costs that brute force and witless engineering

generates.

Manifest requisites

Its time to save the planet and to slash data centre energy consumption and costs. Smart DW and

Decision Support can be lean, mean and clean, and without the need to waste valuable resources,

whether that resource is people and know-how, time, money or energy.


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Afterword

Information Management Manifesto Initiative

The Information Management world is in a poor state. Levels of professionalism are at an all-time

low; disciplines such as Data Warehousing and Decision Support are awash with chancers,

charlatans and dogma, and as time moves on, the worse the reputation of the profession becomes.

Information Management desperately needs an ethical and professional revolution, one that all

professionals can contribute to and support. To this end, we as professionals need to create a

democratic, global and self-imposed constitutional code of ethic that professional people of

integrity will abide with and will feel that adds real value to the profession.

During 2012, cambriano energia will be working together with partners, clients, collaborators andpeers in shaping and defining a DW / DSS Manifesto, which we consider to be a necessary and

imperative initiative for promoting visible ethical and professional integrity in the DW / DSS

discipline.

To this end we have established a series of touch points through which people can engage in,

initiate and contribute to debates, discussions and discourse on ideas, suggestions and proposals for

an IM Manifesto, initially focusing on the areas of DW and Decision Support (BI, MIS, KM).

IM Manifesto Initiative Touchpoints

Twitter: @IMMANIFESTOLinkedin group:http://www.linkedin.com/groups?about=&gid=4299867

Facebook group:http://www.facebook.com/groups/339430782746340/

Associated Linkedin page for theIM*NET - the IM, DW and BI professional network

group: http://www.facebook.com/groups/292721250763469/

Blogspot blog:http://immanifesto.blogspot.com/

IM Manifesto Initiative 2012 The founding

document:http://cambriano.es/content/manifesto/imManifestoDiscussion.001.20120212

.pdf
http://www.linkedin.com/groups?about=&gid=4299867http://www.linkedin.com/groups?about=&gid=4299867http://www.linkedin.com/groups?about=&gid=4299867http://www.facebook.com/groups/339430782746340/http://www.facebook.com/groups/339430782746340/http://www.facebook.com/groups/339430782746340/http://www.facebook.com/groups/292721250763469/http://www.facebook.com/groups/292721250763469/http://www.facebook.com/groups/292721250763469/http://www.facebook.com/groups/292721250763469/http://www.facebook.com/groups/292721250763469/http://www.facebook.com/groups/292721250763469/http://immanifesto.blogspot.com/http://immanifesto.blogspot.com/http://cambriano.es/content/manifesto/imManifestoDiscussion.001.20120212.pdfhttp://cambriano.es/content/manifesto/imManifestoDiscussion.001.20120212.pdfhttp://cambriano.es/content/manifesto/imManifestoDiscussion.001.20120212.pdfhttp://cambriano.es/content/manifesto/imManifestoDiscussion.001.20120212.pdfhttp://cambriano.es/content/manifesto/imManifestoDiscussion.001.20120212.pdfhttp://cambriano.es/content/manifesto/imManifestoDiscussion.001.20120212.pdfhttp://immanifesto.blogspot.com/http://www.facebook.com/groups/292721250763469/http://www.facebook.com/groups/292721250763469/http://www.facebook.com/groups/292721250763469/http://www.facebook.com/groups/339430782746340/http://www.linkedin.com/groups?about=&gid=4299867


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Acronyms

BI Business Intelligence

CEP Complex Event Processing

CPU Central Processing Unit

DQ Data Quality

DSS Decision Support System

DW Data Warehousing

EDW Enterprise Data Warehousing

IEEE - Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers

KM Knowledge Management

MIS Management Information System

OLAP Online Analytical Processing

Documents

Aspiring Tendencies in Information Management