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Checkers To Chess: Time To Step Up Your Information Management Game? A White Paper

by

Ian Rowlands

Checkers To Chess:

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Checkers (English Draughts): a simple game played on an eight-by-eight squared board (with sixty-four total squares) with twelve pieces on each side. The pieces move and capture diagonally. They may only move forward until they reach the opposite end of the board, when they are “crowned” or “kinged” and may henceforth move and capture both backward and forward.

Chess: a game of skill for two players using a checkerboard on which chessmen are moved. Initially each player has one king, one queen, two rooks, two bishops, two knights, and eight pawns, which have different types of moves according to kind. The object is to strategically move the chessmen to checkmate the opponent’s king.

Introduction

I’m sometimes fascinated by the thought that before the 1950’s, there really was no such thing as Information Technology (or Data Processing, as it was often called back then). How did businesses manage to handle their operational activities or make big decisions without the support of a data warehouse? How could there be any assurance that the financial information reported was accurate? (Well, perhaps we should skip that one!)

It is evident is that there is a lot of money spent on information – its creation, management, protection, and exploitation. It is also evident that there is a lot of discomfort about whether that investment is wise, and whether the IT function is using the investment as efficiently as possible. At least as far back as the 1970’s, significant work was being done to address the question “Do Computer Systems Really Pay-off?” (Lincoln, 1986). One way or another, the question of the value of information technology won’t go away. More recently, in 2004, Nicholas Carr caused a furor when he asked, “Does IT Matter?” (Carr, 2004). It is also clear that some significant share of IT investment is wasted. According to a respected industry source,1 firms use only five percent of the data available to them; however, created data is growing 40-50 percent annually, and only 25-30 percent of that is being captured!

There’s a lot of risk around information. In their excellent book, “IT Risk” (Westerman & Hunter, 2007), George Westerman and Richard Hunter lay out a framework that categorizes information risk in terms of availability, access, accuracy, and agility. IT risk, as it relates specifically to information assets (as opposed to infrastructure or people), might be probed using the following key questions:

� Do our information systems allow the right people to use the right information in the right way… and prevent all other usage?

� Can people get to information as and when needed?

� Is the information correct and can users use it correctly?

� Can information systems adapt to changing requirements in a timely and cost-effective fashion?

Because the answers to these questions are essentially metadata, it has become accepted that metadata management is as a way of mitigating information risk. Unfortunately, although the premise that metadata is the key to unlocking information success is a fair one, it would be a large claim to say that experience so far has fully supported it. This paper sets out to address the gap between expectation and experience.

What is happening in the world of information management is changing the game – I think of it as shifting from “Checkers to Chess.” It requires a shift from tactical to strategic thinking – from playing a simple child’s game to establishing yourself as a “Grandmaster.” Rather than using a standard set of pieces to make some simple moves to

A lot has been written about

the definition of metadata – much of it accurate but

uninformative. Here, we define

metadata as any supplemental

information that assists in

understanding the structure, meaning,

provenance or usage of an

information asset.

1Forrester Research Inc., quoted in CIO Magazine, November 2011

Time To Step Up Your Information Management Game?

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get to a clear objective, successful information requires the deployment of a range of assets with different skills and abilities in more or less elegant combinations to reach one of several goals that might be defined as success. It’s deceptive – the board looks the same, but the game has definitely changed!2

Enterprise Metadata projects “fail” …

It’s an ugly truth. After more than 35 years of working with enterprise metadata management technologies, and nearly 15 years of involvement with managing two of the best-known solutions, I have to recognize that not many enterprises create sustainable enterprise metadata management programs. This white paper sets out to explore some of the issues underlying that uncomfortable fact, and to offer some suggestions as to what Information Managers should do to avoid the disappointment of short-term success turning into long-term disillusionment.

Manage the Expectations

Metadata is everywhere and all sorts of people can benefit from it. As enterprise dependence on information grows, that proposition becomes easier and easier to defend. At the same time, it’s not always easy to acquire metadata and to manipulate it and present it to support every possible use case. For these reasons, we suggest that you need to manage expectations at strategic and tactical levels.

Managing expectations at a strategic level has two elements – the first is establishing a corporate commitment that the only metadata management that will take place is metadata management with payback, and the second is a governance framework that allows delivery on that commitment. Failing to be clear about the specific and measurable benefits of the metadata management program, and to track the benefits, creates a threat to sustainability. When executive leadership changes, the perceived value of “soft” benefits changes. Failing to put in place an agreed framework that defines how benefits will be captured and measured leads to constant debates as to “real value.” Where the metadata program manager is a persuasive advocate, this may not matter – but we have seen many programs decline because there is no clear framework to define what metadata should be managed, and why.

Managing expectations at a tactical level is about communication. What can users reasonably expect from the metadata access capabilities you provide, how can they provide feedback, and what reaction can they expect when they do provide feedback? Even a simple “annotate” capability allowing users to comment on the accuracy and usefulness of metadata will make a valuable difference. In an environment in which every user of information systems has access to personal technology offering access to deceptively simple and valuably “apps,” metadata needs to provide value, yet be unobtrusive.

Moving From Checkers To Chess

Recognizing the issues that have delayed the arrival of pervasive and sustainable enterprise metadata management is interesting, but how should a CIO or VP of Data Management respond? This is where the “Checkers to Chess” analogy comes in. Many metadata management implementations share the following characteristics:

� They are focused on improving the efficiency of information management professionals. They target management of applications, data models, DBMSs, and data warehouses.

� They require any business users to learn specialized user interfaces and navigate their way around complex information structures.

� They struggle with the difficulty of managing the capture and synchronization of metadata from many complex sources.

Traditionally, metadata management has focused on operational systems and related information. Demand is expanding rapidly to encompass documents and text, social media, mobile data, image, audio, video, and infrastructure. Managing scope as business needs change is extremely important.

2I was tempted to say, as we see the emergence of “big data” and the need to manage unstructured content in all its glory, that the game has changed from one-dimensional to three-dimensional chess!

Checkers To Chess:

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Creating a long-term approach to making metadata valuable imposes some key requirements. Most importantly, there has to be a recognition that metadata management is not a project but a program, based around a very sophisticated infrastructure. Information Management “chess” requires the ability to combine tactics and techniques to solve business problems over a long period.

Watch for the Technology Disconnect

Corporate IT – and Information Management in particular – has an awkward paradox to deal with. IT people have a tendency to understand their value in terms of the features and functionality they deliver to the business. Business people, however, have no real interest in “bells and whistles.” They simply want to access information to get their job done – they need to get at a necessary and sufficient level of supporting information as easily as possible. This paradox has been creeping up on IT – and software vendors – for quite a while. Businesses are increasingly unwilling to “waste” talent on understanding and using complex capabilities while applications and supporting software become ever more “sophisticated” and consume greater levels of talent to be fully exploited. Recently, the dilemma has become painfully pointed as phones and tablets have introduced an “app” for every task, creating a discontinuity that I call the “iGAP”!

Figure 1: The Challenge Of The “iGAP”

This disconnect is one of the deepest underlying causes of the inability to sustain metadata management environments. To try to narrow this gap, it’s becoming best practice for smart Information Management professionals to deliver metadata through “simplified” mechanisms – portals, specialized search engines, and applets. Even more encouraging, some clever solutions are emerging that allow users to point at a piece of information and have supporting information “pop up” on demand. When combined with other “platform” capabilities, what emerges is an enterprise information management platform that provides a step change in usability.

There is a second aspect to this “technology disconnect” issue. Enterprise applications have been difficult to implement and manage (anyone who has been involved in an ERP implementation will vouch for it!). Unfortunately, this has also become true of metadata management applications. The new breed of solutions, however, now do a much better job of managing the metadata collection and integration process, and require fewer “advanced” skills to install, customize and extend.

In a recent survey,

36 percent of senior business

leaders noted the rising

expectations of younger

workers was pressuring IT to keep

technology current

(Forrsights Business Decision-Makers Survey, Q4 2011,

Forrester Research Inc., 2011)Business / IT Management Application Complexity

Tech

nica

l Res

ourc

es

Willingness to use

Requirement

The “iGAP”

Time To Step Up Your Information Management Game?

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Watch for the Cultural Disconnect

There’s a cultural disconnect that accompanies the technology disconnect. Technology leaders are just that … technology leaders. They are rarely business leaders. Some enterprises have sought to address the issue by “importing” business counterparts to manage information technology functions. The experiment rarely succeeds. It’s like trying to take a checkers player and asking him to play chess . This is a very difficult challenge. A metadata management program really needs a leader with the ability to understand a wide range of complex technologies as well as the empathy to understand what a broad user community requires to be successful in using information to develop, operate, and govern the business. The metadata management programs that thrive and make a real difference to the business they support are blessed by a leader who can form and communicate a vision that spans business and technology domains. And sadly, when such leaders move on, all too often, there is no succession planning and the program loses momentum and eventually ceases to deliver value.

What Will A “Best Of Breed” Metadata Management Solution provide?

Metadata Management solutions have evolved over many years. Originally, metadata management was a single solution applied to a specific technical challenge. This evolved into the “mega repository” – a “one size fits all” that rarely satisfied anyone. The next phase – and one still embraced by some – was to provide “islands of metadata” so that each user was provided with facilities that were fit for purpose. The challenges with such an approach are that metadata is often duplicated and users dealing with multiple roles may have to learn multiple different approaches to achieve all of their information management tasks.

A new solution is emerging that synthesizes the best characteristics of its predecessors. Figure 2 (see page 6) provides a broad schematic. They key characteristics are:

� An ability to access any exposed metadata, using a variety of transport and federation mechanisms.

� Reconciliation and integration of metadata across all metadata sources to provide a consistent view of all aspects of information assets.

� Integration and management of semantic, syntactic, structural, and administrative metadata.

� Data management capabilities, allowing for an understanding of how information assets have changed over time, and protection of metadata for recovery and audit purposes. Management of the technical information life cycle is a key element in information governance programs.

� Management capabilities ensuring that everyone has access to capabilities and information as required (and which they are authorized to access).

� Workflow tools to automate collaboration.

� Developer capabilities providing extensibility as needed.

� An “organic” user interface which adapts to each users’ roles and authorities so that all available facilities are presented in a seamless set of access modes – “pop-up,” web-based “portlet,” web service , etc.

Checkers To Chess:

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The last point is the key. The notion of user/function-specific applications as not a bad one – but in practice the creation of separate capabilities for business user access, application management, data warehouse management, master data management, and so on, leads to the creation of complex management processes and many separate repositories. This, in turn, leads to a requirement for bridges between repositories and the environment becomes unmanageable. The requirement now being addressed is for an integrated metadata “world” with a master model mediating access to all metadata and an “organic” user interface that adapts to provide each user with a unified view of information assets. The best of breed solution presents a very clean and simple browser-based interface for the business or technical user, and allows information assets to be discovered and explored without requiring any understanding of such complexities as “metadata” or “metamodels.”

Figure 2: The “Best Of Breed” Metadata World

The Information Management Grandmaster’s Checklist

So what’s the player to do? Certainly, switch from checkers to chess … but what does one need to consider in order to win at chess? The best chess players are honored as “Grandmasters.” What makes an Information Management Grandmaster? It’s certainly an important question. A recent analyst survey (Forrsights Business Decision-Makers Survey, Q4 2011, Forrester Research Inc., 2011) makes the point that nearly half of all business leaders have had their expectations of enterprise IT changed by their use of consumer technology, and IT is expected to keep up.

We offer this Grandmaster checklist to help you create and execute a successful metadata strategy and raise your game. Beware! Some of the items are deceptively simple to describe, but may require considerable skill to achieve:

� Recognize and continually market the need for pervasive sustainable metadata management. Those we have seen be most successful have “branded” their metadata management initiatives (usually not saying metadata) and sold and resold it as business management changes.

� Make the financial value of metadata visible. Grandmasters have an annual “metadata business plan” that describes proposed initiatives with costs and benefits for the next year – and review results against predictions every year with business management.

Semantic metadata

Classic metadata

Model De�nition and Management

Metadata Integration

and Reconciliation

Role De�nition

Security and Work�ow

Application Program

ming

Interfaces

Con�guration and Version Control,Archive and Backup

MetadataStores

TransportMechanisms

Role andFunctionSensitive

User Interfaces

MetadataMarts

Time To Step Up Your Information Management Game?

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� Manage expectations. Tell consumers “this is what you are going to get.” Provide what you promise. Allow feedback when expectations are not met, and take corrective action.

� Deal with the technology disconnect. The iGAP is real and getting worse. Look for a metadata management platform that can manage all types of metadata, and dynamically adapt to the needs of changing user communities.

� Find metadata management approaches that minimize dependence on scarce technical skills.

� Recognize the cultural disconnect. Commit to putting in place Information Management leaders who combine technical expertise with the ability to see the business users’ point of view. Make sure that all user communities are provided with built-in mechanisms that allow them to influence the evolution of metadata management facilities (without expecting them to know that’s what they’re doing!)

Changing your game is not easy, so why bother? At a personal level, it comes down to asking how you want to be perceived. Are you a “utility player” with a limited set of moves that serve a limited range of objectives, or are you a master strategist who can be relied on to come up with the right creative Information Management moves to add value to your business? From a business perspective – how do you view your investment in information? Is it an unmanaged “cost of doing business” or an investment in optimizing use of people and money, accelerating time-to-market and minimizing information-related risk? A well thought out and well executed metadata management strategy ensures that every person in your organization can make the best possible use of information. Business processes are operated more efficiently; decisions are made more quickly and accurately. Business changes are made as rapidly as possible. Information is protected from misuse and improper exposure. Information Grandmasters are game-changers for their enterprises. Isn’t that what you want to be?

Bibliography

Carr, N. G. (2004). Does IT Matter? Information technology and the corrosion of competitive advantage. Boston, Massachusetts, USA: Harvard Business School Press.

Drucker, P. F. (1969). The Age of Discontinuity. Harper Collins.

English Draughts. (n.d.). Retrieved from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_draughts

Forrester Research Inc. (2011). Forrsights Business Decision-Makers Survey, Q4 2011. Cambridge, Mass.: Forrester Research Inc.

Lincoln, T. (1986). Do Computer Systems Really Pay-off? Information and Management , 11 (1), 25-34.

Toffler, A. (1970). Future Shock (First ed.). Random House.

Westerman, G., & Hunter, R. (2007). IT Risk: Turning Business Threats into Competitive Advantage. Boston, Massachusetts: Harvard Business School Publishing.

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