Stress and Information Quality
“Stress” is a good way to describe what happens when data is reused or repurposed, as the term really puts things into more human terms. Kind of like the effects of a dealing with a corporate reorganization, execept on a systems level. JM Juran defined data quality very precisely as, “fitness for use”. The issue is that “use” seems like a concrete term, and in the short-term (say the life of the project that creates the data) it probably is. However, for the medium- or long-term (say, the life of management of the data) the term “use” is going to change, perhaps radically. Not surprisingly, this disconnect translates directly into stress, both on people and systems. This isn’t because techies have built a bad system or because the users gave poor specifications. This is because life moves on, situations change, and organizations evolve. No blame, just reality.
The challenge then becomes to design processes and products that are flexible and forward thinking enough (”fit for future uses”). An interesting analogy is with the total cost of ownership for a PC. Google engineers have found that for their use, the electricity to run costs more than hardware itself. To reduce the long term stress (in this case, cost) it is worth it to architect the right solution from the beginning, even if it cost a bit more.
