If you’re involved in Business Process Management (BPM), you may be interested in the Zoomerang survey available here. All participants receive a complimentary $5 gift card from Starbucks and five participants will win an iPod touch.

This post isn’t sponsored – but I know many of us are involved in BPM so it is a decent opportunity.

If you’re not sure what BPM is, here’s a little bit from wikipedia:

Business Process Management (BPM) is a field of knowledge at the intersection between management and information technology, encompassing methods, techniques and tools to design, enact, control, and analyze operational business processes involving humans, organizations, applications, documents and other sources of information.

Bible Printing Errors

Humans have had centuries to mess this up and they’ve certainly used this time to make some humorous mistakes. Considering that the text of the Bible is the main product, glaring mistakes such as these are evidence that they didn’t have a handle of their data!

• The dubbed “Wicked Bible”, printed in 1631, omitted the word ‘not’ from the 7th Commandment, and thus it read “Thou shalt commit adultery”. The Bibles were recalled, the printer was fined $400 for the mistake (a lifetime’s wage), and only 11 copies remain today. Current value – $90,000.
• The “Murderer’s Bible” declared “Let the Children be killed” instead of “Let the Children be filled”.
• The “Sin On” Bible reads “Go and sin on more” rather than “Go and sin no more”.

Baseball Card Printing Errors

Baseball cards are no longer the staple toy for young boys that they used to be. Still, it appears that the most valuable cards are the ones that have mistakes (or, for some other reason, are extremely rare). Like the Bible examples above, whats printed on the card is the product – so these companies have a lot of work to do to get their product in shape. It isn’t just older cards that have errors, it seems the new batches have just as many mistakes. Here are some of the most interesting:

• On the back of the 1964 Rookie card of Dave Bennent it says “the 19 year old curve baller is just 18 years old”
• Johnny Lipon’s 1954 Topps card lists his team name as the Baltimore Orioles, he is shown in the big portrait picture wearing a Boston Red Sox hat and the smaller action photo has him wearing a St. Louis Brown hat. Turning the card over to see what team he actually plays for is no help either because the back has him listed with the Chicago White Sox.
• Claude Raymond is seen to have not ‘zipped up’ in both his 1966 and 1967 baseball cards. The reason for the mistake two years running is likely because of the reuse of an images from the previous year’s photoshoot.

Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing

In a similar vein, Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing is a company that promotes risk and failure as they have found that this ultimately leads to innovation. You probably know them as 3M, and you can read their very interesting story here.

I tried to find other examples of where companies have made mistakes that led to valuable and/or collectible products but haven’t found a ton. If you have any fun tid-bits, please share with other readers in the comments!

So, because I was really looking for something of high-value to provide to you, I’ve spent the last hour searching through all of the Data Governance articles I have bookmarked over the months and one really stuck out. Its an easy read and provides a clear description of where Data Governance belongs in an organization and why.

“The Data Stewardship Approach to Data Governance” writeup is located at TDAN. Give it a read today and really consider what it is saying. I’ve mentioned that my program is run out of IT, but the council is made up exclusively of business leaders, leveraging IT SMEs when needed. This works for us, and I personally believe that the business needs to always steer the data governance agenda.

Bonus links:
Mark Madsen covers some of the trends he noticed coming out of the TDWI Conference in San Diego last week, including observations on Data Governance.

DataFlux sent out a press release with info on what is going on at their conference so far. Check it out so you can say you keep your ear to the ground…

Data Governance and the Holy Grail
This is a nice article on how Data Governance is helping the business better connect with IT, and vise-versa. The ‘holy grail’ in this case is the idea that the business and IT and working so closely together that the business needs are always met by the IT solutions. Last I checked we hadn’t found the holy grail, but Data Governance has certainly helped build a better bridge between the two groups.

Data Governance Training Webinar
Take advantage of this one because its free… Just click on that link, then click “Award-Winning UMB Bank Success Secret: High Quality Customer Data” at the top. I listened to it again the other day and I am really impressed by what UMB was able to do in just a short amount of time. There are lots of great tips and advice that you can apply to your organization today.

The Importance of Being Encrypted
This article is focused on encryption, but mentions in the last paragraph the importance of a Data Governance plan. In my experience, Compliance has always been responsible for the data security policy (in conjunction with the Data Management team) but this article seems to state that it should be the responsibility of the Data Governance council. I tend to disagree, but its good to know what thoughts are out there.

DataFlux Event
If you are interested in an upcoming DataFlux event, you’ll want to check out this link. Its only about 2 weeks away, but if you are close to Orlando, FL you should definitely consider heading over there.


Data Governance Opinion article at ComputerWorld
This article deals with storage and compliance issues, the current state of data management, and what a long term solution might be.

Articles

Data Governance at a Malaysian Financial Institution
An article about Eon Bank, a company that had no Data Governance until June 2006. They implemented BI solutions from SAS to get a single view of the customer.
http://computerworld.com.my/ShowPage.aspx?pagetype=2&articleid=5841&pubid=4&issueid=119

IBM Acquires Princeton Softech
This acquisition happened a couple of weeks ago and shows how IBM is really bulking up on their Data Governance offerings. This is just another example of the trend for organizations to adopt Data Governance.
http://www.echannelline.com/usa/story.cfm?item=22309

An Introduction to Master Data Management
A nice, clear article about Master Data Management.
http://www.sda-india.com/sda_india/psecom,id,25,site_layout,sdaindia,articles,601,p,0.html


Data Governance: The Importance of SOA Governance
A fairly detailed article about SOA Governance, listing Data Governance as a necessity for success. I wrote a post a while back about SOA and Data Governance.
http://www.dmreview.com/article_sub.cfm?articleId=1089387

BI, Process and Integration Trends
A nice writeup on the current state of the Data Management field, including some good tid-bits on Data Governance.
http://www.dmreview.com/article_sub.cfm?articleId=1089409

Resources

Data Governance Podcast
Listen to an mp3 from consultant Jill Dyche about setting up a successful Data Governance Program. Its only about 30 minutes long and is pretty insightful.
http://media.techtarget.com/audioCast/ENTERPRISE_APPS/sDM_JillDycheDataGovernance_07-18-07.mp3