Chapter 9 - Data Requirements Analysis

Abstract

The chapter first discusses a virtuous cycle, in which operational and transactional data is used for business analytics, whose results are streamed back into those same operational systems to improve the business processes. An introduction to data requirements analysis is provided and followed up by walking through a process that can be used to evaluate how downstream analytics applications use data and how their requirements can be identified and shared with upstream-producing applications. The types of data quality rules that can be defined as a result of the requirements analysis process can be used for developing a collection of validation rules that are not only usable for proactive monitoring and establishment of a data quality service level agreement, but can also be integrated directly into any newly developed applications when there is an expectation that application will be used downstream. Integrating this data requirements analysis practice into the organization's system development life cycle (SDLC) will lead to improved control over the utility and quality of enterprise data assets. Data quality rules, defined within the context of the dimensions of data quality, are reviewed in the chapter.