Jacqui Caren wrote:
> Damian Brasher wrote:
>> Identifying what data is important to you as an individual or your
>> organisation is *hard* and [orgaisation (individual) specific] therefore
>> the answer needs some thought.
> Value is not easily measured - especially when talking about old
> code or docs/specs.
Definitely, it's one of those qualitative problems that is difficult to
translate into a single engineered solution.
Like when designing databases where one of the tools used to analyse a
users requirements would be the Entity-Relation diagram, so this survey
contains a matrix which starts to create a profile matching the user
requirements. The survey has been bubbling around in my mind for a couple
of years and the criteria to describe data loss is measured in three ways;
damage, cost and emotional impact. The age of data should not matter, if a
code repository exists and is sold from then it's very important to the
business. The fact that archive needs change over time is another area
that is difficult to quantify.
I found writing the survey helpful and felt very relieved when I had
finally put into words what I need to communicate to potential users. I
hope the 'consultancy' value add for those that fill in the survey makes
it worth their while. The remaining notes could help make some decisions.
After this survey I'll build another worksheet which will be integrated
into the DIAP (R) worksheets. I'd like to create a set of online forms
which collect the right data from a potential user then auto-generate a
configuration file reflecting the input further simplifying setup. Then
users can re-visit the form if needs change.
--
Damian L Brasher
http://www.diap.org.uk
