Standards. Expectations to live up to or guidebooks to live by? In the world of technology, the answer is yes – to both. Forbes brought this topic to our attention in their article, “The Trouble with Standards.”
If you spend enough time working with standards, ontologies, reference data or information modeling, you will find yourself involved in the process of creating, modifying or defending specific standards.
Standards of some form or fashion have been around for ages. You would think that by now everyone could communicate easily over the subject. However, there is such a thing as standards paralysis from too many competing standards. And surprisingly, there is a life cycle to standards, with several key phases.
Ontology change management requires that you constantly re-evaluate the state of your data, the cost of change to your organization’s infrastructure, and the benefits to be gained by making that change. It means maintaining a constantly rolling window of data versioning, so that once a technology or a standard falls outside the parameter, it gets turned over.
Melody K. Smith
Sponsored by Data Harmony, a unit of Access Innovations, the world leader in indexing and making content findable.
