In a means, I assume it is all Ted Codd's fault. The quirky genius who laid his present, twinkling and stylish like some type of jewel, earlier than us in 1970 probably by no means thought he was giving rise to a whole generation of again-seat drivers and obsessive naggers. Yet here we are, nonetheless gnawing at an MIS management that avoids us however can not appear to find the gumption to just tell us to go away. In spite of everything, writers and consultants all seem to agree that Information Administration is the key to competitive advantage, that messing with it could expose any business to chaos and annihilation. They can not all be incorrect--can they?
Knowledge Administration is a type of professions, like advertising, that spends a substantial portion of its vitality attempting to prove to itself and to the world that it is doing one thing of value. When I first bought into the sphere, the most popular matter at seminars and DAMA conferences was "Easy methods to Promote DA to Upper Management." Nearly ten years later, I look in my newest native DAMA publication and skim a notice from a long-time member asking for solutions from different members. The question: "How do you show DA contributes to the underside line of the enterprise? What sort of metrics present DA offering a constructive return on funding?" We don't seem to have come very far in ten years. Yet throughout those self same ten years, management has cheerfully embraced desktop computing, shopper-server architectures, simply-in-time inventory management, and a number of other improvements extra radical and reworking than DA. Why has this straightforward concept failed so utterly to take maintain?
This emphasis on selling when discussing DA and management is, when you think about it, fairly patronizing. In spite of everything, we now have been delivering this message for ten years; do we really assume management is so...well...dumb...that they cannot understand what was so clear to us back in 1984? Are we poor explainers? Or might or not it's that they perceive completely and are simply not shopping for? We now have worked exhausting to sell this idea over the years, but ultimately we have now to wonder if working harder is not the reply--whether, in a roundabout way, we could also be working onerous on the improper task.
Back to Ted Codd for a moment. His 1970 paper which outlined the relational model was a landmark, and is justifiably well-known today. It's marvelously complete; a 1995 description of the relational mannequin would add little to what's in Codd's paper. It's totally grounded in mathematical principles; it's internally consistent, elegant, and rational. It defines a universe through which every thing makes sense and the whole lot is consistent. To those of us slugging it out in a messy world of MIS politics, hardware limitations, and customers who do not know what they want, it held out a promise of an attainable world of order and clarity--an Aristotelian universe of rationality and of guidelines which might be followed. That's an extremely seductive vision to individuals who like things to make sense; for my part, we've followed that imaginative and prescient right into a morass.
The search for an orderly universe of fine conduct is an historic one, and its roots lie deep in us. In its darkest kind it may well lead to political repression and even fascism. However even in its benign varieties it is doomed by the perverse nature of people, who have feelings, agendas, prejudices, and needs, and who will not behave in convenient ways. So our seek for order--for E-R diagrams and Zachman frameworks, for normalized knowledge structures, for predictable and descriptive names--turns into, as we all the time knew it might, an issue in control.
Knowledge Administration is a type of professions, like advertising, that spends a substantial portion of its vitality attempting to prove to itself and to the world that it is doing one thing of value. When I first bought into the sphere, the most popular matter at seminars and DAMA conferences was "Easy methods to Promote DA to Upper Management." Nearly ten years later, I look in my newest native DAMA publication and skim a notice from a long-time member asking for solutions from different members. The question: "How do you show DA contributes to the underside line of the enterprise? What sort of metrics present DA offering a constructive return on funding?" We don't seem to have come very far in ten years. Yet throughout those self same ten years, management has cheerfully embraced desktop computing, shopper-server architectures, simply-in-time inventory management, and a number of other improvements extra radical and reworking than DA. Why has this straightforward concept failed so utterly to take maintain?
This emphasis on selling when discussing DA and management is, when you think about it, fairly patronizing. In spite of everything, we now have been delivering this message for ten years; do we really assume management is so...well...dumb...that they cannot understand what was so clear to us back in 1984? Are we poor explainers? Or might or not it's that they perceive completely and are simply not shopping for? We now have worked exhausting to sell this idea over the years, but ultimately we have now to wonder if working harder is not the reply--whether, in a roundabout way, we could also be working onerous on the improper task.
Back to Ted Codd for a moment. His 1970 paper which outlined the relational model was a landmark, and is justifiably well-known today. It's marvelously complete; a 1995 description of the relational mannequin would add little to what's in Codd's paper. It's totally grounded in mathematical principles; it's internally consistent, elegant, and rational. It defines a universe through which every thing makes sense and the whole lot is consistent. To those of us slugging it out in a messy world of MIS politics, hardware limitations, and customers who do not know what they want, it held out a promise of an attainable world of order and clarity--an Aristotelian universe of rationality and of guidelines which might be followed. That's an extremely seductive vision to individuals who like things to make sense; for my part, we've followed that imaginative and prescient right into a morass.
The search for an orderly universe of fine conduct is an historic one, and its roots lie deep in us. In its darkest kind it may well lead to political repression and even fascism. However even in its benign varieties it is doomed by the perverse nature of people, who have feelings, agendas, prejudices, and needs, and who will not behave in convenient ways. So our seek for order--for E-R diagrams and Zachman frameworks, for normalized knowledge structures, for predictable and descriptive names--turns into, as we all the time knew it might, an issue in control.