Thursday, February 22, 2007

Useless reports and GIGO

I got pulled into a couple of meetings today. Both meetings involved doing some analysis of data submitted to me. Both results/reports had problems, per the reason for the meetings. I will talk about one of them as it is more specific to the point.

GIGO

A person (the manager) entered information through Excel. I sorted and categorized the information based on unique identifiers in one of the columns. The meeting started off with why does this report have 4 different numbers and identifiers for 'XYZ'? I should have merged together the 'X YZ', the 'XZY' (typo), and the 'X Y Z' identifiers together to get one correct number, this report is of no use, and where did I get this information?

GIGO

I tried to explain that this was the information that person entered in Excel. I then went forward to offer a couple of options on enumerated/listed identifiers so that they would be consistent. "But I do it this way because I can [enter uber entry technique process] it very fast". That is good...but why are we having this meeting? "Because the report is useless".

GIGO

The sooner you can control the input process of data, the better for everyone. I am looking for comments and suggestions to help control scenarios like this that do not involve nerf bats that have a big 'GIGO' label on it.

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