My high school English teacher, Mrs. Campbell, asked each of us to write a short personal poem. Struggling for inspiration, my friend Dan Robinson finally gave up and, instead of penning an original work, submitted the lyrics to Rush’s song, “The Trees" (from the Hemispheres album, for those reminiscing along with me).

Our collective smugness about Dan’s bold move turned to outrage when we learned that Mrs. Campbell had given Rush’s lyrics a C-minus. Dude!! Who did she think she WAS? I’m telling you this because sometimes what we think is “good enough” really isn’t. And that goes for data quality.

Call it what you will. Data that’s fit for purpose. Conformance to requirements. At its core, data is only as good, valid, meaningful, and clean as its context for usage. Who cares what we’ve endured to cleanse, correct, and enrich our data? If our users still can’t (or won’t) accept and use it, then it’s really not worth much at all. Mrs. Campbell didn’t see the inherent poetry of Rush’s lyrics. She was after something else entirely.

I was thinking about all this during TDWI’s World Conference in New Orleans this week. Evan Levy’s Monday keynote was packed and people were especially interested in his statements about data content standards, relationships, and access rules being key to MDM. Thursday keynote Barry Briggs highlighted the risks of overmatching with MDM. Speakers Frank Dravis, James Masuoka, Andy Hayler, Danette McGilvray, Kim Nevala, and Arkady Maydanchick all provided different views on why data quality matters in the context of MDM, business requirements, and data governance.

My buddy Dan Robinson’s C-minus was a great lesson for me since I myself was on the verge of turning in the lyrics to Supertramp’s “School.” I thought the better of it though, and got crackin’.

P.S.: It's official! TDWI is having its 2nd annual MDM Insight conference next March in Savannah. Philip Russom and I co-chair it. Check it out here.

Technorati tags: data quality, Master Data Management, MDM, TDWI, Master Data Insight