Give every piece of data a job
Sitting in our recent senior quarterly business review a week or so ago, our boss was having a bit of a moment about a document that we all needed to input into. He made a comment during the discussion that has stuck with me. That comment was “give each piece of data a job”. His reasoning is very sound – basically don’t design something for so far into the future that what you are designing is not workable today. He also wanted to make sure that our team didn’t have to fill out a big bunch of columns that wouldn’t provide any value immediately.
He got me thinking about this statement and about how we data people are currently going about our designing job. Are we looking at the business problem we are expecting to solve from the perspective of solving it for today – or are we looking far into the future and considering how to solve for all time? Is there a trade off where we can solve for today but with the future in mind so that we don’t have to solve again down the line? Or is this a step too far and we are creating space for data that doesn’t yet have a job? Are we designing with Data FOMO on our mind perhaps?
The reason his statement stuck with me for a few days is that I am finding myself in agreement. I really like the idea of giving data a job – it certainly meets the quality requirement of “fit for purpose”. It also fits into the real need companies should be working towards – let’s have data that we use! ?I think it is time that we focused much more on what we want our data to do and less on what if we needed a piece of data in the future but don’t need it now. I am not however, saying we need to ignore the future need – it is always important to consider our future. But how about we take what we need today, ensure that we design according to those needs and park the future data needs for the future? After all, in today’s fast-paced world everything changes very quickly so future needs may very well have changed by the time we get to that future.
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I guess what I am trying to say is that we data people need to think more carefully about data and make sure we “give every piece of data a job”.
The above thoughts are purely the authors own.
Empowering Purpose-Driven Women | Life-Rhythm Coach | Creating Harmony by Aligning Work, Family, and Well-Being
2 年I was speaking with a client recently who needs to shift platforms because data gathering requirements have shifted significantly in the past year. I encouraged them to think at least five years in the future. What would they need in a platform. Love it!