Data Quality Chills Are Worst Than Wind Chill

In his @openmethodology blog post, Jim Harris (@ocdqblog) explained how the recent cold wave created havoc in North America. He compared wind chill factor to the chill factor associated with data quality. It is a great analogy not just because cold waves and data quality can both give you chills but also because they can be devastating.

I wrote a blog post while ago about how Data quality wakes us up in the night. I shared a story when bad data forced us to take a trip to office on a cold, wintry night.

Winter storms can range from a moderate snow over a few hours to a blizzard that may trouble us for several days. These storms may be accompanied by strong winds, icing, sleet and freezing rain causing major disasters. Likewise, data quality issues may be small in nature requiring a quick fix in one application. But going by the experience, they are agonizingly bad requiring repair in multiple data sources, interfacing applications and extract-load processes.

Extreme winter cold often causes poorly insulated water pipelines to freeze. Poorly projected plumbing may rupture as water expands within them, causing much damage to property and costly insurance claims. Poor data quality in your applications and databases may require days (and nights) to correct. Data flowing in and out of your applications via data integration tools will need major plumbing work to remove the clog created by bad data. Eventuality of this is the hefty penalties resulting in the form of in-correct reporting fees and compliance issues.

The danger from wind chill or any other environmental variations are guaranteed in every part of the world. Similarly, data quality issues are sure to trouble your organization at some point or the other. However, good news is, unlike weather variations on which we do not have any control; we can take pro-active measures which can help alleviate trouble arising from bad data.

[pullquote_left] Plan ahead and address data issues before data quality disaster strikes your organization. [/pullquote_left]

Just like how you get prepared with winter gear before the cold waves hit, plan and address data issues before data quality disaster strikes your organization.

Image courtesy of Evgeni Dinev/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

COMMENTS

3 Thoughts on Data Quality Chills Are Worst Than Wind Chill

Kathy

1 Aug 2014

10:28am

Prash, I too like the analogy of data quality to wind chill. I’ve seen it used before as well: http://www.qas.com/data-quality-news/what_s_your_data_quality_windchill_factor__9817.htm

Prashant

1 Aug 2014

10:36am

Kathy,

Thanks for commenting. Very relevant article. Glad to know, I am not the only one who thinks Data Quality chills are worst than wind chills. Good post on QAS. Thanks for sharing.

-Prashant

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