"Choosing proportionate measures" - Section 5 of 5 of THE DATA GARDEN (free excerpts)


This is the fifth part of the chapter titled “The Data Garden”, from the book “The Data Garden And Other Data Allegories”.

This final section wraps up the story by considering different measures that could have been deployed and also looking forward to applying data management at a significantly larger scale.  It also provides the first of six “lessons”, which underline some of the core messages of the book.

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Choosing proportionate measures

The new measures you’ve put in place to deal with the data litter are a great success. Even better, the increased engagement with data users leads to better relationships with them and improved use and maintenance of the data garden as a whole.

However, there were some additional things you could have done, which you consciously chose not to, because you knew that they were too heavy-handed for this particular data garden. In the very biggest garden estates that your data gardener friend looked after, she had implemented CCTV monitoring for the areas where it was required and even security guards to enforce the rules.

For the biggest data gardens, these kinds of measures were clearly necessary, especially in situations where there were valuables that need to be protected or where there were dangers, whereby breaking the rules could put data users at serious risk. However, these stronger measures bring with them increased costs and detrimental impacts on the experience for data users, such as privacy concerns, which need to be carefully considered in a balanced way before implementing them.

Given that the data landscape garden that you’re looking after doesn’t have any really high value contents that could be stolen and doesn’t have any serious dangers, you knew that trying some of the less heavy-handed measures and seeing if they work was the sensible first step. If they hadn’t worked, you could have considered other measures, but after monitoring the effects of the actions that you tried first, you knew that there was no need to do any more.

Your owners are delighted with the way in which you’ve handled their two gardens. You’ve put in place systems that are proportionate for their size and complexities, which have enabled you to maintain and develop them so that they have become more fruitful and delivered far more use and value than they did before. 

One late afternoon, after the gates to the data landscape garden have closed, you are sat out with the owners, enjoying the sights and sounds of nature surrounding you. You discuss the journey that you’ve been on together, from the early days working on the small data garden, to the challenges tackled and overcome in this, now wonderful, data landscape garden.

The discussion soon moves to the future.

The data garden owners are planning on expanding their operation by acquiring a number of large garden estates, at far greater scale than anything they’ve done before; and they’d like you to be a part of their enterprise. 

This next venture would be totally different from before, because it would be far too big for you as a data gardener to be hands-on in the running of each of the gardens. You would need to build a team of experienced gardeners to run each of the gardens and would need to establish management structures and systems to optimise the value that all of these various gardens could deliver overall.

This greater scale and scope could open up fantastic new opportunities to share resources across gardens, to develop totally new events and ways to generate value from the gardens. There could be opportunities and options possibly not yet imagined…

Congratulations! You’ve been appointed to be the Chief Data Gardening Officer.


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Data Management Lesson 1:

Data Management is like gardening. It’s a never-ending task, because data keeps growing in volume and variety; but with the right expertise and leadership, and by utilising the right techniques and tools, you can keep your data well maintained, and cultivate it to deliver outstanding value.


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I hope you’ve enjoyed this excerpt. 


If you are interested in reading more, please do check the book out on Amazon:

  • The Data Garden on Amazon.CO.UK
  • The Data Garden on Amazon.COM

    • Thanks for reading!


    #data #datamanagement #datagovernance #dataquality #dataarchitecture #metadata #dataliteracy #allegories #metaphors #analogies #stories #storytelling 


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