Having a data disconnect can constitute an emergency. How well do you know your data? If someone wanted to know the definition of a metric, the source and the reports fed by that data, could you respond? If not, then you may need to create an organizational data knowledge base. More than a data dictionary, a data knowledge base is the basis for system design, training, operations and reporting.
A data knowledge base would have made the difference for NASA. According to a 1999 CNN article:
"NASA lost a $125 million Mars orbiter because a Lockheed Martin engineering team used English units of measurement while the agency's team used the...metric system for a key spacecraft operation,"
Closer to home, there was a conflict in understanding related to a data system that I helped to develop. In this case, the error was at the source of data input.
The short story is that the system was designed to collect data using multiple units of measure. The data was not being input correctly because we missed one unit of measure that was the default for several plants. The numbers being input each month were six orders of magnitude---yes a million---larger than the nunbers from the other similar sites because the data entry personnel did not convert the entry values.
Fortunately, that glaring error was well, glaring, and was discovered quickly by regional management team who reviewed the data during our months of testing. To correct the issue, I had the developers to add the unit of measure, and sent communication to all the sites regarding selecting the unit of measure corresponding to their locale.
Conflicts in data understanding are common when defnitions are not explicit, and/or not communicated. Having a good understanding of the data is essential to all in the data supply chain, including business analysts, system designers, data entry professionals, analysts, and data consumers. Misunderstandings can be costly, for equipment lost in space or incorrect reports on the ground.
