The reality of being data driven

I have read several articles over the last few months, essentially asking us as professionals, to talk about business outcomes and business decisions as opposed to data management, data governance, or data quality. I, myself, am guilty of the same conversations, I do believe we have to drive business outcomes and deliver value.

While the reality is, that the business doesn't care about the nuances of how the data is wrangled, or who is wrangling it - they just care about the business outcomes and accurate information .. right?

Caring about outcomes and what value we deliver to the business is absolutely correct, but creating a "Data Management for Dummies" view on the capability, I think is a disservice to the value that we bring, and the complexities that we hide.

Another article on LinkedIn last week described a journey that you might take in a car, comparing data to the fuel you put in the car, and that you don't care about the fuel, you just care about the journey, your destination, and getting there.

Let me offer a contra analogy - For you to get the fuel from the pump into your car in the first place there has been an inordinate amount of work and eye watering investment that has taken place already.

Investment into the exploration of the oil locations, investment into locating the rig, commissioning, drilling, extraction of the oil, transportation, storage, refining, quality checking, segmentation, storage, and movement to the pump - to the point where you lift the pump and fill your tank - trusting it is marked as the correct fuel type.

All these activities are critical to enabling you to take the journey. And while you may not care how the fuel got there - you do care about the price you are paying for it - driven by wholesale costs, distribution costs, and fuel duty.

In the same context - Data must be located (identified for use), extracted, refined - analysed, quantified, quality scored, segmented - tagged with relevant metadata - business terms, standards, ownership, stewardship, Moved - Data lake, data warehouse, operational data stores etc to the point where you consume it in your reporting tool of choice.

All of this takes investment - financial, resource and time - all costed and all have an impact on the value that data brings to the business.

Do not expect your stakeholders to approve funding levels required for complex activities when you have sold them a vision of business decisions and outcomes without the understanding of the journey, complexities, and time to get there.

If everyone is telling you it's all about outcomes and business value, and not explaining the often long and complex journey to get there, then you may be guilty of wearing the Emperor's New clothes yourself.