Build Your Data Quality Castle First

May 25, 2012 by Dylan Jones in Data Governance, Data Quality

I came across a story recently about Walt Disney that really resonated with the way I’ve seen organisations succeed – or fail – when launching their initial “drive to data quality.”

Apparently, when Walt Disney was first creating Disneyland he told the designers to construct the castle first. The reason? He wanted everyone involved to witness the incredible sight of the castle and use that as a guiding vision for the quality and imagination that the rest of the part should aspire to.

This is a smart tactic for those fledgling data quality initiatives because you need to demonstrate that this stuff truly works before you start building committees, councils and all the other plumbing that goes into scaling up your data quality efforts.

In a recent interview with Jill Dyché (Data Governance and Data Quality Advice for Leaders) she talked about the need for avoiding the “kick-off and cold-cuts syndrome.” This is where organisations kick-off a data governance initiative only to complain about data quality without moving forward (and eating cold-cuts in endless meetings!). This is exactly why I believe you need to build your “data quality castle” first. Create an initiative that is within your grasp and will become a guiding light for future participants.

My first employer achieved this with scarce funding as we basically used our lunch breaks for training and some SQL and C scripts, the only data quality tools available at the time! We focused on one tightly defined problem and when we could demonstrate huge benefits to the organisation and individuals involved it became our version of data quality castle, other teams wanted to learn more and senior management could see that data quality process improvement could have a dramatic business impact.

Did you create a data quality castle to launch your initiative? Do you agree with this approach? Welcome your views.

4 Responses to “Build Your Data Quality Castle First”

Jill Wanless

May 25, 2012

Great post Dylan and I totally agree! For us we’re still working on our Castle but one of the ways we have generated interest and shown business value is to profile the data and show the business the state of it. When they see different versions of data that impact our risk exposure for example then they right away take notice and are on board with working towards improvement.
Thanks!

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Dylan Jones

May 26, 2012

Hey Jill, lovely to hear from you as ever and I actually I had your journey in the back of my mind as I wrote this, all those tales of posting results everywhere and getting that early traction.

You should add Master Castle Builder to your resume

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Frantz Sainte

Jun 06, 2012

Dylan, I also agree with the castle idea. I am also in the process of duilding the castle. I pretty much started by evaluating the state of the data, in terms of quality and business risks. Everyone agreed that they needed something to rally around., and I began making recommendations that the majority of the user community supported. We identified a pilot environment which is being implemented currently.

I can see the resplendent castle analogy as an appropriate way of enlisting early support for data quality.

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Dylan Jones

Jun 30, 2012

Hi Frantz

Excellent, great to hear someone adopting similar approaches, thanks for taking the time to share your journey, do keep us informed as things progress and reach out if you ever want to brainstorm those next steps!

Good luck, Dylan

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Build Your Data Quality Castle First

4 Responses to “Build Your Data Quality Castle First”

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