When I signed up for a bi-monthly column with EIMI, I was asked to provide a name for my column. Based on my background I thought of names like Method Madness, pointing to my affinity for methodologies; XS: Extreme Scoping, exposing my keenness for XP (extreme programming) methods; Enterprise Information Architecture, affirming my dedication to data and information; and Data Warehousing on Steroids, reflecting my career path. But as I was tossing around these names, I realized that, no matter what topic I will write about, there is one underlying theme I want to emphasize: We need to get Back to Basics.

Enterprise Information Management (EIM) projects are some of the most challenging initiatives that an organization can undertake. Not surprisingly they also provide some of the greatest value when properly executed. One of the common mistakes that project managers new to the EIM space make is that they neglect to realize that THE two key building blocks of EIM are meta data management and data governance. Meta data management provides the technical infrastructure necessary to support the EIM objectives. On the other hand, data governance instills the people and processes that will work with the meta data and data to support the EIM program.

I recently received a letter from a friend of mine who was valiantly trying to initiate some architectural activity in a very large Enterprise within a very important industry sector. The note outlined all of the objections to doing architecture that my friend was encountering. The note is not significant because of one particular Enterprise, nor of one particular industry. The note is significant because these are the kind of objections I hear day after day from many Enterprises in many industries and the objections are coming from IT, not the Enterprise!

More and more companies are coming to the realization that an Enterprise Information Management (EIM) initiative provides a critical foundation that is essential to meet today’s many business challenges. A fundamental asset of any organization is data – it is a critical resource that should be managed. Many organizations must transform from their current practice of creating isolated islands of data, that only satisfies individual programs or business units, and begin to manage data at the enterprise level.

Increasingly, enterprises are recognizing the value of a governance approach to the data found in their organizations. The potential benefits of data governance include rationalization of data for a common view of the business, alignment of processes that use that data, and creation of a powerful foundation that can coordinate business informational needs throughout the organization.

If we are going to treat information as a product, we must look at the information manufacturing systems that create the information products. These information manufacturing systems are analogous to a product manufacturing system. In these systems the raw material or data is acted upon by some processes to produce information products that have value for an information consumer that can exist inside or outside of the organization.