11 Aug How to add value to business glossaries by linking to technical assets
Business Glossaries, defined as a central register of business terms and their definitions, are often lost in the wilderness, searching for a use case. Apart from handing it over to new employees, along with their onboarding training requirements, when was the last time you heard of someone actually using a business glossary on a day to day basis?
It is my experience that the primary reason for this is that Business Glossaries are normally a dead-end function. They don’t link to any actionable outcome and as a result there isn’t a strong use case for the Business Glossary in the first place. It’s like the dictionary. It’s useful to know it’s there, but it’s only used in desperation when no other option exists.
However, storing the Business Glossary in the same tool as your Enterprise Metadata Catalogue enables you to link the business terms defined in the Glossary to the system tables and columns that store the data. This linkage from the dry definition to the living example of the content give life to the Business Glossary. For example:
- You can now not only know the definition of “customer” but physically where the customer data exists
- If you find a field in a database with a vague or incomplete name, referencing the Enterprise Metadata Catalogue will not only tell you who is the data steward, but provide the complete business definition of the field and what data and business domain it belongs to
Breathe new life into your Business Glossary by using an Augmented Data Governance tool to integrate your business and technical sides into a single catalogue that is adding value to your organisation.
David Stewardson | 11 August 2020