Chapter 4 – Structuring Your Project

Publisher Summary This chapter explores how The Ten Steps methodology can be applied to the data quality project approaches. There are seven commonly used project approaches: Establish Business Case, Establish Data Quality Baseline, Determine Root Causes, Implement Improvements, Implement Ongoing Monitoring and Metrics, Address Data Quality as an Individual, and Integrate Data Quality Activities into Other Projects and Methodologies. An Establish Business Case approach may be an exploratory assessment or a quick proof of concept assessing data quality on a very limited set of data. For this approach, the methodology can be used to think through the data quality problem, understand the information environment at a very high level, and write a few queries against the data. An Establish Data Quality Baseline approach is used when the business has committed to improving data quality and there is support for a project team and resources. A Determine Root Causes approach is used when the specific data quality issues are already known and it has been decided that further investigation into the root causes is needed. An Implement Improvements project approach executes the recommendations developed when the data quality assessment and business impact analysis have generated a plan for data quality improvement. In the Address Data Quality as an Individual approach, any approach that has been previously described can apply—with the project scaled to fit what one person can accomplish. Any of the Ten Steps may apply in the Integrate Data Quality Activities into Other Projects and Methodologies approach. Furthermore, the chapter offers suggestions on management of time in the project.