Data Quality : The Field Guide

Rating:
Summary: Practical advice in an important business area
Review: Extremely easy to read and learn from. Provides key learnings and guidelines for not only surviving but thriving in the information age. Important for all CEO's and senior leaders in business to read to help develop an understanding of the importance of data quality and practical steps to achieve it.

Rating:
Summary: Good Practical Advice
Review: Good practical advice for improving data quality. Covers the most common data quality problems. Well written. Some other sources to look at online:


http://www.dmreview.com
http://www.datalever.com


Rating:
Summary: Practable and Useful!
Review: Have actually improved performance results by implementing many of the techniques found in the Field Guide (tips have helped me in a number of places and ways). An easy read. Practical, applicable and actionable.

Rating:
Summary: Complete and Thorough
Review: I like this book quite a bit because although it's not a huge doorstop of a tome in terms of length, it's quite complete and thorough. Some data quality books cover management aspects, some the technical aspects, and some take other angles. This book takes a look at all of the different angles on data quality and sums them up into a very nice package.

One of the things I liked about it is the section on social aspects of data quality, since so many technical people I work with have a great idea but aren't able to implement it for lack of understanding of the social aspects of working on data quality projects. Another is a part where Redman goes through the process of how data quality is tracked over time, to see if things are improving, and the way that he draws a distinction between records that are "perfect", and records that are "usable", which points out some differences that are important. There is even a very relevant section on data quality problems in the US elections of 2000.

The nice thing about this field guide is that it should have everything an organization needs to do some serious data quality work (including even middle management roles and responsibilities). I think it's a very solid book that would be a great addition to data manager's and other tech manager's libraries.



Rating:
Summary: Extremely Helpful
Review: This book gives excellent insight to the practical issues associated with data quality. The book gives some great suggesions on how businesses can improve performance through a focused approach to managing information. I enjoyed reading it, and have actually begun to use some of the ideas presented in the book in my current job.

Rating:
Summary: The Essential Guide to Data Quality
Review: This is an excellent everyday guide to data quality. Easy to read and filled with tips and techniques for starting and improving a data quality program. The field guide format makes it a great reference book.