Competing with High Quality Data: Concepts, Tools, and Techniques for Building a Successful Approach to Data Quality

Chapter 8 Data Quality Monitoring and Reporting Scorecards

8.0 Introduction

The most important aspect of the data quality effort is the monitoring and reporting (M&R) function. An effective M&R function is absolutely necessary for successful DQ deployment. This function is usually carried out with the help of scorecards. The DQ scorecard is a strategic tool that can be used by data quality teams and technology teams to understand the behavior of CDEs in relation to the performance of business function, capability, business unit, or operational data source (ODS).

As we all know, it's very difficult to plan on things if we cannot measure them. To this end, the scorecards provide the necessary measurement and tracking methodology so that teams can identify what should be done and measured as part of planning process. Besides assisting with planning activities, the scorecards also help to prioritize areas of focus so that a business can work in those areas as part of its root-cause analysis activities. The most important aspect of the scorecard is its design. We need to collect all user inputs so that we can develop simple, informative, and easy-to-understand scorecards. In this chapter, we describe a mechanism to construct and implement effective scorecards. Through this mechanism, a user can store, sort, and retrieve DQ defect information and perform remediation through failure pattern analysis. The framework presented in this chapter is quite useful in the Improve and Control ...