ETL—Are your data missing the bus?

Learn this information systems term!  Extract (get the data out of one place), Transform (change them from their original format into another one), and Load (put them into another place).  ETL is the toughest process for getting data in front of a teacher, administrator, parent, or other audience.  Schools, districts, and states spend millions of dollars to buy the best reporting software tools, but fail to influence instruction, school management, or decision making because the process of getting the right data, in the right place, in the right format, at the right time is so difficult.

Software vendors can purposely ignore or under estimate this effort because if their customers knew how hard ETL is, they might not spend millions on software that won’t have necessary data in it.  Budgets can dangerously under provide the dollars needed.  Project plans can miss targets because of the time required. 

ETL problems are at the top of the list of why information systems fail to satisfy their users. 

The EduGuru speaks:  Sounds like the challenge parents have to get their kids out of bed, dressed, and onto the school bus on time.  No learning takes place if the kids miss the bus.  No data-driven decision making takes place if the data miss the bus. 

Comments

[Greg]

The hardest part of ETL is managing the chain of communication between the agency staff, who understand the data's meaning, and the engineering staff/consultants, who are building the ETL plan. Business analysts, project managers, and other stakeholders only add to the tour of babel cacophony of partial communication. Only MO, with its swiss army knife super-ETL/PM has the ability to cut through that morass quickly.