Understanding business strategy, objectives, and challenges

The biggest mistake that can be made in a data quality initiative is focusing on the wrong data. If you fix data that does not impact a critical business process or drive important decisions, your initiative simply will not make the difference that you want it to. It could lead to the end of your work before it has had the chance to mature. Senior stakeholders have a lot of proposals competing for budget, and it is common for initiatives that do not make the right impact to lose their funding.

Focusing on the wrong data often happens when the person instigating the data quality initiative or sponsoring it has a particular background. One organization I worked with had a new data quality manager with a purchasing background. They came from a large organization with a manufacturing element, where the efficient purchasing of raw materials was make or break in terms of margin. Suppliers were managed really effectively, and...