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March 25, 2005
Metadata Quality
In the world of Metadata, the most important dimension is quality. Data are of high quality if they are fit for their intended uses by customers in operations, decision making, and planning (Juran, 2002). Thomas Redman (2003) indicates that "fitness for use" involves "freedom from defects" (such as being incorrect, out of date, or improperly defined) and possessing the "desired features" (such as being relevant to the task at hand, comprehensive, and at the proper level of detail). Total Quality Management (TQM) defines quality as consistently meeting customer expectations and needs. The single best way to ensure data quality is to supply data that is used by people who are knowledgeable of what the data should look like, are able to recognize when it is not correct, know what would be correct, and are able to provide feedback that will resolve the discrepancies. The essential factors are customer usage and customer feedback. Monitoring the usage of metadata and provisions for feedback to improve data content and requirements provides a solid foundation for Metadata quality management
Posted by Todd at 1:10 PM | Comments (2)
March 23, 2005
Globalization
Recently, I had the opportunity to provide a metadata tutorial to an academic conference where the welcome speech touched on the impact of globalization. The speaker indicated that the erosion of jobs within the Information Technology community could be fixed by simply increase the supply and quality of students within computer science or any related field. Fueling this perception are article after article telling us the same thing.
The economic rise of Asia’s giants is the most important story of our age. It heralds the end, in the not too distant future, of as much as five centuries of domination by the Europeans and their colonial offshoots Martin Wolf (Financial Times)
There is no job that is America’s God-given right anymore. - Carly Fiorina (HP)
Currently, India is becoming the back office of the world. Everest estimates companies all over the globe are sending as much as $5 billion in work to Indian outsourcing service providers. But all the headlines about the Indian success story are obscuring a development that can have just as much impact. I predict China will be the next big wave in offshore outsourcing. – Todd Furnis
Income Confers No Immunity as Jobs Migrate – USA Today
The world has arrived at a rare strategic inflection point where nearly half its population—living in China, India and Russia—have been integrated into the global market economy, many of them highly educated workers, who can do just about any job in the world. We’re talking about three billion people. – Craig Barrett (Intel)
Ok, you get the idea that plenty of people believe that we are entering into a new world of work where the globalization of labor, capital, and innovation will take center stage for years to come. However if we step back a feet, we can see another perspective where history paints a different picture. Globalization is clearly in the early stages of hitting the white collar world and especially the upper and middle layers of the organization. But globalization is not the predominant reason we have job erosion. Globalization is only the tip of the iceberg; the vast majority of reasons revolve around the fact that we have been very good at what we are doing. Automation, reuse, standardization, communications, and abundance of talented individuals is the real reason we need less and less information workers.
Posted by Todd at 12:55 PM
March 21, 2005
43rd ACM Southeast Conference
The ACM Conference held at Kennesaw State University was excellent with a great deal of papers applicable to the world of metadata. Tennessee Tech University had several students publish a paper on building a digital repository. Georgia State and Georgia Tech got together to publish semantic integration of metadata in Bioionformatics. My session was well received but we competed with a .Net session and I lost that battle. Can you believe that Metadata lost to Microsoft? Maybe next time we can take them. :-}
Posted by Todd at 2:17 AM
March DMReview Article
The Internet is spectacular, 90 billion pages and growing, 352 million authors, 171 million domain names and 945 million users. The Internet is a result of rapid deployable technology that allows anyone with a computer to place their thoughts, concerns and expertise online. The majority of the information placed on the Web is not to sell something but rather to simply be heard. The Internet allows us all to be heard, perceived and branded by our own imagination. The Internet is dynamic, untethered, built with passion, unedited, governed only by technology and available to all. The Internet works 24x7, 365 days per year and works equally well in Sharpsburg, Georgia, as it does in Shanghai, China. The Internet is not always accurate, sometimes confusing, without management or guidance and many times fails to deliver accurate information to the end user.
Read the Rest in the March Edition of DMReview
Posted by Todd at 2:01 AM
March 15, 2005
Web Page Metadata Still Matters
Yes, I know that all but one of the internet search engines ignore the Metatag but that does not mean that we should stop documenting our pages. When the day comes, I have argued that it will not be anytime soon, that we need to convert our content to an XML framework then we will need to have this content readily available. Dublin Core, RDF, RAS, and many other technologies continue to evolve and push us toward the day when we tag our content effectively. It would nice to simple run a conversions program that reads your HTML files and generates the RDF metadata automatically. Heck, if nothing else do it because no else is doing it and you will be able to smirk at them as they toll away and you are sitting on the beach.
Posted by Todd at 10:06 PM
March 14, 2005
Support Model Questions
Make it easy for the user to engage in the technology
How do users engage in the technology? Is the configuration, ordering, or utilization of the technology easy for the average user to understand? The root cause for the Deploying Technology for Technology Sake” is here; users dont know what they dont know. Make it easy for them to see, feel, and experience the value of the technology.
Have the technology user tested; Usability Testing
We generally rush the deployment into the user community without actually performing usability tests as described in the prior element. Usability tests dont take more than hour, are easy to administer, and can be eye opening experiences for the deployment teams.
Ensure that Knowledge Management plays an active role in the product offering
User guides, templates, best practices, tips, FAQ and many other knowledge based artifacts help users in a self service world. Take the time to produce high quality artifacts that are easy to use (See prior item).
Implement Metrics for Content and Usage as a Minimum
Metrics are critical to the success of any projects. Content and usage are just a starter set of measures that should be integrated into the implementation. Technology should have a metric base where managers can judge the success and failure of the project.
What services will you implemented or plan to implement along with the Technology
Products are only the beginning. Value of technology will come from the services not from the product itself. Services will drive additional value, usage, and content within the technology environment.
Success is defined by the user, so ask them
Customer surveys are critical for an evolutionary process of improvement. Today, surveys can be generated quickly with the use of the web so the key is to collect the feedback and evolve the product offering.
Customer Support: Who, What, When, How, etc.
Customers want self service so give it to them. The Customer Support must provide information on who you are, what you do, when you can get it done, and how the process works.
What we say we do is different than what we really do
Web site managers understand this better than anyone. Reviewing the usage logs tell you more about what employees are actually looking at versus what they say they are interested in. How can you see what people are actually doing?
Simple Questions with Complex Answers
Who are your customers?, Who is your competition?, What Systems Support Quality?, How do you Market or Brand the Technology?, Why should people do business with you? How do you create a service culture? What are you good at? (Hitching Posts).
Posted by Todd at 12:43 PM
March 8, 2005
Thank You, Again
The best boss I ever had was one that came around on a weekly basis and delivered a simply Thank You” or I appreciate your efforts this week, you really moved us forward. In 15 years of MBA training, we all have learned how to prioritize, demand excellence, plan everything out and push people to the limits. But, we have forgotten about the most important task of being human, appreciation. Of course, we thank people when they perform Moses type work but it’s the day by day tasks that really matters. Unfortunately, many managers think its a sign of weakness or that the employee will use the act against them during the review or we don’t have time anymore. I would ask everyone to track their Things Done Wrong statements/actions and compare that to their Things Done Right statements/actions. Successful organizations understand that the 80-20 rule applies here and the 80 should be on the latter
Posted by Todd at 4:51 PM
March 7, 2005
We are Failing in Transforming the IT Organization
The essence of the previous post is what do you do when technology perfection is expected? The trend of technology is to make it embedded and ubiquitous; hide the complexity and expose simplicity. The Internet exploded this idea due to it’s simplicity and Blogs/Wiki will do the same. Yet inside the organization, we still measure our worth by what we know, hording the knowledge, and making the complex more complex. When will the IT organization wake up and get a clue? We had better figure it out before 95% of our value is automated, standardized, or outsourced.
Posted by Todd at 9:01 PM
Moving Beyond the Product
One thing that is becoming abundantly clearer is the focus on the product within the technology community. Recently, our organization starting reviewing the capability, usage, and content of the different technologies deployed in the information management space. Applying this to the metadata space, we excel at deploying the application and the supporting infrastructure. Applications are abundant and they can easily be deployed in the current infrastructure of any organization. Whose responsibility is it that the repository environment is actually used? We in the technology utilize the time tested excuse of Who us?. It can’t be our problem since we deployed the application into 24x7 environment with 99.9% up time. We are hiding behind the infrastructure wall and its time we emerge and ask ourselves what our responsibility is to making the application easy to use and easy to understand? What does your integration process look like? Have you moved every business process online and make it a 1-2-3 success story? Or have you taken the traditional path; make it as complicated as possible because we measure our worth by demonstrating how smart we are and how much knowledge we can hoard. Perhaps, we need to take a look at a new business model. It is time!
Posted by Todd at 9:00 PM
March 5, 2005
2005 INFORMS Marketing Science Conference
My presentation on enterprise metadata has been accepted as one of the featured tutorials for the 2005 INFORMS Marketing Science Conference hosted by the Goizueta Business School at Emory University on June 16th, 17th, and 18th.
http://www.bus.emory.edu/MKS2005/
Posted by Todd at 1:46 AM
March 3, 2005
The Metadata Leader Within
First, lets start with the person that is ultimately responsible for the metadata implementation. Is that person you? Take a realistic evaluation of your passion for the subject of metadata. What ever that level is, double it. What ever your knowledge of the utility of metadata is, double that too. Take the number of books, articles, white papers and references that you have read and double it. Locate and contact industry experts or at least people that have attempted the task of implementing metadata and double your level of contacts. When you get to the point where you think you have a through understanding of the concepts and principles of metadata then go back and double it again. I’m not kidding here. You must develop or become the most knowledgeable resource within your organization on the subject of metadata. Once you have exhausted your resources within the realm of metadata then take a look at data architecture, information architecture, library science, content management and knowledge management. The goal of this exercise is to create a level of knowledge and understanding where you see value of metadata in every project, application and environment. People that succeed in creating value for the organization must be willing to do the things others refuse to do. You have to pay your dues and do your homework. Winners in our business prepare, train, apply themselves, and work to become the very best at metadata. Get focused; dont be like the mosquito in a nudist camp-they see lots of opportunity but cant decide where to start.
Posted by Todd at 12:54 AM
Nicholas Carr Reference
Many months ago I wrote an Article asking Does Metadata Matter which took some of Mr. Carrs questions and applied to the world of metadata. It must have been complimentory in nature:
http://www.nicholasgcarr.com/doesITmatter/reviews.shtml
Quote:
Over at DMReview.com, R. Todd Stephens asks, Does Meta Data Matter?
Posted by Todd at 12:48 AM
March 2, 2005
Surround Yourself with Perfection
Yesterday, I posted a list of my top ten sites and a few emails have come in to the why? The simple answer is that we should all surround our selves with what we perceive as perfection. Perfection is:
The Phantom of the Opera (Original Cast Recording)
The 1969 365 GTB Daytona Ferrari
The Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci
The person that mesmerized me by wrapping my Christmas presents last year
The first daffodil flower that blooms signifying Spring is coming
Posted by Todd at 1:37 PM
March 1, 2005
Top Ten Sites
Going online is one of the biggest challenges we face when moving toward the Brand You (Circa, Tom Peters) paradigm. The web exposes us, it allows our voice to be heard and contradicted by 450 million other users onof the web. One of my presentations revolves around providing a step-by-step guide of going online. One of the steps is to collect a portfolio of best sites in your favorites and review this list often when you update your site (which you should as often as you update your CV or Resume). I keep two lists, one is simple labeled as best sites which contains about 36 sites that have sparked my curiosity and creativity. My other category is a Top Ten list where I hold the top ten most influential sites to my design and brand framework. If I come across a site that is really great, then one of the ten must be removed. Here is my current portfolio of sites in no particular order:
http://www.tompeters.com
http://www.answerthink.com/
http://www.davidco.com/
http://www.graphicwise.com/
http://www.zyman.com/index.asp
http://www.lexonomy.com/
http://www.mobilem.de/
http://www.netconcepts.com/
http://www.rullkoetter.de/
http://www.jimcollins.com/
Your list will be different as your design methodology is different but please share your Top Ten so we can all improve our sites.
Posted by Todd at 10:33 PM | Comments (1)