For as long as I can remember, I’ve had a very simple metric to assess how serious a company is about its information management practices:
The number of software releases delayed solely because the data has not been properly curated.
I have yet to see a single example.
Software releases are delayed for development and defects. Why not for data?
This is not to suggest that information management is always accomplished within the project timeline. Quite the opposite. More often than not, when faced with a looming deadline even the most earnest application development teams will jettison information management. Assuming, of course, that it was part of their project plan in the first place.
After all, development teams are driven to develop. Their incentives are all aligned to releasing code. And any time not spent coding is considered to be “corrupted.”
This will not end well. Like an impatient traveler. Does this sound familiar?
You’ve got a tight connection at the Atlanta Airport. You arrived at Terminal C. Deplaning, you consult the monitor and see that your next flight is departing shortly from Terminal A. You dash from your arrival gate to the escalators down to the Transportation Mall. You approach the bottom of the escalator just as the Plane Train doors close and it pulls away. Signs over the doors flash the wait time until the arrival of the next train. More than two minutes.
The numbers click down.
This is like microwave time.
Each second feels like an eternity.
You can’t just stand there and wait, your flight is leaving soon. You have to keep moving.
So, you set off at a brisk pace down the corridor toward the next terminal. Now you’re making progress. Just then, you hear the hiss of doors opening in the distance behind you. The next train has arrived. Another hiss of the doors closing, and you hear and feel the train as it passes. You’re not even half-way to Terminal B and you still have one more to go after that. Doors open and close far ahead. You realize you’ve made a mistake and have no choice but to continue. Another train passes, stops, and departs. You finally arrive at Terminal B, but the first train that seemed like it would never arrive has long since departed. You decide to wait the two minutes for the next one to take you the rest of the way.
You finally reach your gate in Terminal A.
Winded.
Sweaty.
And much later than had you been patient.
You were betrayed by the impulse to be always moving, and you lost sight of your real objective: getting to your departure gate as quickly as possible.
Taking the time to manage your data can feel like waiting at the platform, although it is definitely not a passive activity. It feels like you’re not making progress. It feels like you’re wasting time. Like you’re not moving. Like you’re putting your whole project at risk. But managing your data is no less important than delivering code or resolving defects. It’s just that the benefits and consequences are less immediately apparent.
Investing the time and effort to manage your data now—to understand your data now—pays dividends many times over across the enterprise. Everything goes faster later, for everyone!
On the other hand, neglecting information management is damaging, short-term thinking. I’ve talked elsewhere about the consequences of poor data understanding, including longer development times, more errors, longer testing cycles, and inaccurately informed decisions. You sacrifice future speed and flexibility in exchange for a couple of days on a project plan or maybe a gold star on your forehead. You think you’re going fast but in reality you’re dragging the whole company down. You just don’t know it yet. And everything goes slower later, for everyone!
Lack of data understanding is a form of technical debt.
Eventually, the overwhelming burden of this debt will make it very difficult to thrive in a competitive environment where speed and flexibility are necessary for survival. As Jason Jennings and Laurence Haughton observed, It’s Not the Big that Eat the Small, It’s the Fast that Eat the Slow.
Does your data–and your understanding of it–facilitate and accelerate progress at your company, or does it impede it?
Can your company move fast enough to survive the next decade? Successful companies–surviving companies–will differentiate themselves in the way that they leverage their data and their understanding of that data to rapidly respond to challenges and opportunities.
Do you measure your company’s time from concept to delivery in years, months, weeks, days, or hours? What is your company doing to substantively reduce that time? If data understanding is not part of that plan, it needs to be added. Fast.
