Eleven Functional Areas in Search of a Narrative

The DMBOK2 provides a functional framework for implementing enterprise data management. Or does it? As production editor for DMBOK2, I have learned a lot about the challenges we face in defining the data management profession. One of them is telling our own story. I will share my journey to the data management profession, my experience working on the DMBOK2 project, as well as writing my book on data quality measurement, with a goal of shedding a different light on the ways we create and adopt the frameworks by which we understand our work.

Before my life in data management, as a reader and a teacher, I was a literary structuralist - a person who thinks of narratives in terms of high level models – tragedy, comedy, irony… This approach to literature closely aligns with modeling. It is about discovering / defining structure, understanding how component pieces fit together, and using this knowledge to create meaning from texts. It also helps people understand stories better because structures can be visualized.

In working on the DMBOK2, I came to the conclusion that we have 11 functional areas in search of a narrative. The goal of this talk is not only to share ideas, but to get a conversation going. We need to tell our story better. What is the narrative of data management? What are our central structures? How do the parts fit together in ways that are meaningful for today's organizations?