Taxonomy: When you take the ‘text’ out of ‘Context’, you are left with a ‘Con’!
June 3, 2008
I have a friend who is a true genius. He has a PhD from Harvard University in Organic/Inorganic Chemistry. He also taught there for awhile. He met and married a very intelligent scientist from Mexico and they had three children. They thought that they were going to have developmental problems with their oldest – or at least that is what the doctors told them. You see, their oldest son did not speak right away. As a matter of fact, when their son was 1, then 2 then 3 years old and not speaking – they would take him to the doctors and the prognosis was the same, he was developmentally behind.
Then while he was 3 years old he spoke his first words. His mother told me this way. So, it was lunch time and ‘my son’ turned to me and said…now remember, this was his first words… “Mommy, may I have some lunch please”? She was shocked and of course very relieved. At the next doctor’s visit, she told the specialist the story. After looking at all the facts, the doctor described things as… Well, you son is very bright and a perfectionist. He was living in a multi-cultural home where both English and Spanish was spoken. Before he chose to communicate (with words), he had to fully understand the framework of grammar and its nuances. Then, he had to work through the process of selecting his base language (will it be English or Spanish).
Fast forwarding the story a few years finds ‘their son’ in first grade. Upon completion of further testing, they found that he was in the top 99.999 percentile in math – among college aged men and women.
This story is not much different than some of the issues we face each day with our clients. More times than not, each team, group, department speaks a different language. I’ll never forget the time where I was asked to develop a strategy for a recognized revenue solution – where they wanted to better align revenue, cost and time to properly manage cash flow and reporting. I was working directly for the CFO and one of the requirements was a report that grouped data as follows, she called it ‘The Region Report’:
- New Business
- East Division
- West Division
- Canada
- P&G
The solution was an education on taxonomy. As mature as this company was, they did not operate with a known taxonomy. Much like my friend’s son choosing not to speak until he fully understood what the framework was and how a taxonomy carried made the context known to both sides, I worked to help define the common taxonomy. Once we did this, we were rocking. This application became on of the strongest points in the organization, because we built a foundational canonical model around a true taxonomy that we socialized. This really became the hub of all data points and drove both master data efforts as well as metadata disciplines.
Looking back, it seems obvious and if you did your job well, this should be the case. Can you guess as to the structure in my oversimplified snippet of a real issue?
The above was decomposed to:
- Country (is a parent of region)
- Region (belongs to Country and is a parent of SVP)
- Senior Vice President (works within a Region and is the parent of a VP)
- Vice President (works for a SVP and owns one or more clients)
- Client (is owned by one or more (many to many) VPs and has a status of Type)
- Type (describes the client and consists of either ‘New’ or ‘Established’)
Also, we have the notion of a date for transactions as well as a time-based dimension for SVP, VP, Client and Type – so people, clients and type can reflect ownership movements.
It might seem painful to go through the rigor and discipline of establishing and socializing a true taxonomy, but its worth it. It’s not much different than building a house on solid rock…why rush and build things on sand. Don’t fall for a ‘Con’ – make sure your text resides within the proper context!
Happy Building,
~ Scott
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