MDM in LED

Good article initiated by Henrik Liliendahl completed by the very good comment of John Owens. I decided to re-blog it in order to continue and complete it.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              As John Owens mentioned, “QUACKs (Quack Alternative Codes & Keys, also called Structured Codes) are a very useful way in business of referring to a frequently used entities, such as products, locations, etc.                                                                                                                                                                    The problems start when data analysts confuse them with Unique Identifiers and then system designers further compound this error by implementing these QUACKs as Primary Keys in tables. This embeds a flawed data structure into every single record that is created in which these flawed primary keys are used foreign keys, for example, in tables linking a flights to St Petersburg airport.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      Now, had the designers used an unstructured Primary Key and shown “LED” simply as a QUACK referencing the Leningrad/St Petersburg airport, the code “LED” could at any time have been very simply changed without in any negative impact on referential integrity in the data sets involved. All past and future flights would automatically reflect the change in the airport code.                                                                                                                       The reason the code LED is hard coded in this way is not an innate part of MDM, it is the result of bad data analysis and worse systems design. A major part of current MDM is to move the knowledge, practices and skills into enterprises to enable them to avoid to making these totally avoidable and hugely costly errors.”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           All of us have faced this kind of problems, consciously or not. This can be a very big issue especially when having very tightly connected legacies. Such original mistakes can lead to decades of re-engineering, trying to decouple legacies in order to be able, later on to bring more flexibility. As you may notice, this is a 2 steps approach that does not bring any business value first – while decoupling – and might bring a Return Of Investment 3 or 5 years after the initiative has been started…                                                                                                                                This is the main reason why, most of these initiatives are never started!!                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              Actually, the only cases I’ve seen such projects initiated – to try to correct the initial error – was due to an unique phenomenon called: “hit the roof”. “Hit the roof” is a side effect of mainframe developers usage, who most of the time were the same ones who did the initial error: “using the QUACKS as primary key”. “Hit the roof” is quite simple as well, after several decades of usage, some QUACKS table value reach the end of the range. We could take the previous example – the airport code based on 3 letters, with one assumption: only letters, no numbers. It gives you a total of: 13,824 possible airports, which might sounds reasonable if we think about the main airport, but which will be quickly reached as soon as you include the small aerodromes into the same table… I guess you saw me coming!! 🙂 I am not an airport specialist, but I am quite sure that some politicians will have this brilliant idea, one day or another – if it is not already done – to have a common repository (Table) for all airport and aerodrome of the world… Then, we will hit the roof!                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          Ok, very good that we “hit the roof” you should tell me, finally, it gives us the opportunity to correct the initial mistake… Well… I won’t be so optimistic if I were you, even though if I agree with the reasoning: having a golden opportunity to put things back into order… Most of the time, the “solution” that wins is the following: let’s introduce numbers in the 3 digits code that we got! Wouhou! Jackpot! We increase from 13,824 values to 39,304… And that will cost only 8 to 10 millions $ to the company!!! You think I’m joking, unfortunately I am not.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 So, what to do then? To start with, the less silly solution is to create “Alias” to smoothly (can take years of continuous efforts, depending on how much your systems are “connected” to each others) move from the “QUACKS ID” that was initially set to a real (dummy) object ID (primary key). It is not the silver bullet that some might look for.. but it’s the only reasonable way forward I know about.                                                                                                                                                                                         Any experience to share on this topic?

Liliendahl on Data Quality

All airports have a tree letter code usually being a mnemonic of the city name or airport name. The airport at Saint Petersburg in Russia thus has the code LED because the code was assigned when the city was called LEningraD. That’s how it is with master data: Names may change but the code of an entity must be kept as it was. And that’s why you usually shouldn’t put meaning into codes.

First sight of Europe 2014.

The Russian MDM (Master Data Management) market has been well described by Dmitry Kovalchuk in a post on the Hub Design Magazine.

This year I had the pleasure of celebrating New Year in Saint Petersburg, a city with great palaces from the time of the czars and czarinas and a growing awareness of Master Data Management including some very interesting start-ups around MDM, where I had the chance to visit TaskData

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How to recover the Gap between Business & IT?

Why does the Gap between Business and IT exist?

I’m sure you will find people who will try to convince you that there is no gaps between business and IT. But, I can give you my piece of advice, it’s been quite many years now that I am working in this context and I can tell you, there are gaps… I am even use call to call it a schism sometimes. But let’s look at why does this schism exist? If we want to treat it, don’t we have to identify the origin of the problem? Since we are Enterprise architect, it is always put forward that we are here to “align the business and IT”, so let’s look at the “what do we have to fill to align them”.

When it comes to improving enterprise performance via technology, IT and the business usually approach the same problem from two vastly different perspectives.  As a consequence, on one hand, business people often lack an appreciation for the IT technical ramifications of adopting a new process. On the other hand,  technology and IT teams usually find business requirements unrealistic. Of course, if both parties are unable to bridge that gap in a highly collaborative way, the consequences can be significant.

As an example, consider the scenario in which the business makes what it believes to be a simple functional request: “I just want to have this function in my application. I would make my life easier”… Then, only to hear back from IT that this request will take six months to be delivered. While it may be true that there are substantial technical implications associated with specific business requests, IT should not expect business users to understand the full impact of all the IT management details – and it isn’t necessary for them to.

How to recover the Gap between Business & IT?

Better approaches would be:

• For business, express and explain their needs, the reason why, benefits they are expecting… in two words: the Business Case (honest one, not a fake).
• For IT to focus on translating the IT management details into business language, so business can understand what IT is saying.

A trap where business is too often ended in is to ask to IT a solution that they have already decided on their own. E.g: ” “I want to have this function in my application.” Doing that is starting it all from the wrong foot and can lead the whole project to huge consequences. My own analysis of this situation is the following: this is happening mainly due to that business doesn’t can/want to spend time to explain what their are already convinced at and that the trust between business and IT is missing from the beginning. So it requires some effort from business to express their needs and not the solution they want. But they are not the only ones who need to make some efforts…

IT has to make effort on its side as well. To start with, IT has to make sure that the thought solutions are really addressing the business real need behind.  Nowadays in many companies, it is quite usal to have IT having the mission to strive for commonality in IT solutions to support different business processes to be supported by the same service or at a lower level: function. Of course, the main goal here is to reduce IT cost. So,back to my first purpose here: to analyse business’ requests and identifying already existing/future services/functions which address the same kind of need is the IT mission as well. Of course, it will take more time to do it, but it is for the sake of the entire company, isn’t it? So what few months spent in a project compare to years of savings? This has to be evaluated and time/money spent to do this evaluation must be accepted by both parties.

So, to me it is a jointly (usually called “collaborative”) work to be achieved. If both parties succeed, first to work on themselves, change their initial behavior, then to work together, I do think that they will be both on a better shape to go for a success. Once IT fully comprehends what the business is trying to accomplish, it may be able to offer an alternative approach that meets the fundamental business requirements and it would even might be done in a shorter time frame at the end.

Opening

Working together on essential business capabilities instead of implementation details, IT and business can often identify solutions that blend the two perspectives. In fact, such collaboration often enables the business to leverage what IT knows about current capabilities or best practices in other parts of the organization. It requires both points of view to ensure that the approach will enable the business to meet market demands.
Further, this type of collaboration positions IT to lead the charge in looking for solutions that are synchronized with business needs. If IT can facilitate a shift in the paradigm to a form a cooperative relationship, both sides will gain in terms of efficiency and results. Rather than responding to requests from business, IT can proactively offer solutions and alternatives. Isn’t it what we are aiming for? So called, win-win situation…

What does Business and IT alignment mean

What does Business and IT alignment mean? #iCMG Architecture World – Linkedin Group discussion http://ow.ly/39LVW

Above, is a link to a very long Linkedin discussion about:

 

Rajiv

What does Business and IT alignment mean?

The objective of this discussion is
1) Define what does IT alignment with business means?
2) Define process needed to align business and IT?
3) Define deliverables for Business and IT alignment (documents, reports, etc)?
4) Define roles and skills needed to for deliverables?

As many others, I particpated to this discussion, but since I am on my blog, here is my (short) answers:

Emeric Nectoux • What does Business and IT alignment mean?

1) Define what does IT alignment with business means?

=> I believe that in most industry (beside the IT industry… even if we could quesiton it) it is business that is steering the enterprise and not IT. So, taking this as a start point, IT is there to support business. That said, what is Business / IT alignment? Quite simple ;o), it is to make sure that what IT brings as support to business serve the Business goals. (and not the opposite 😮 )

2) Define process needed to align business and IT?

=> Here I will stand behind Fabien Villard (the previous post in the discussion list). he gave most of the answers: Agility, ability to catch and answer to the business needs at the same pace that business is changing… Focus on small changing instead of changing the whole world at once…

3) Define deliverables for Business and IT alignment (documents, reports, etc)?

=> Dude, do you want me to do your job? ;o) Look at framework and EA methods, I’m sure you will find what will make you happy in terms of deliverables!

4) Define roles and skills needed to for deliverables?

=> Skills: open-mind, business and IT skills, power play, pragmatism, high capacity of abstraction and at the same time being able to dig quickly into details = have the macro / micro view capacity…
Roles: whatever you name yourself, till you know what you’re doing.

I will be pleased to know your view as well…

Why doing Enterprise Architecture?

You cannot effectively manage something if you cannot “see” and understand (know)!

Especially if it is big, complicated, or will grow and change at some point in time, or if  you need to communicate accurately with others about it.

The Cost of an error

There we are, in the heart of the topic! Money, save cost…

As you figure out with this simple chart, this is common sens, the earliest you are able to detect and error in your strategy, the most money you will save.

So, how will Enterprise Architecture will help you to save money?

Enterprise Architecture is the underlying design or structure of anything:

• It exists whether or not  it is made explicit (know).
• If it is not explicit, assumptions must be made.

If explicit, Architecture is…

• “The set of descriptive representations about an object…” John Zachmann
• A model or representation of an object created in order to…
  • “see” the object,
  • “communicate”with others about the object,
  • “do” something with or to the object: create, manage, evaluate or change it.

As a final thought for this post…

Enterprise Architecture is the underneath work that support any kind of Governance. Without such approach, Governance is blind or in the case relies on “convictions”… The issue with convictions is that, in some cases, they can blind us as well and keep ourself in a box. In this case, of course,  convictions  are quite dangerous especially if they are not challenged by facts that are partly brought by Enterprise Architecture.