By Stephen Putman, Senior Consultant
This posting is the second in a series discussing various aspects of the financial justification of a metadata management system implementation that are not obvious in many existing analyses. Today, we will discuss the time and effort saved by software development staff in system implementation projects.
In Part 1 of this series, we examined the value of a metadata management system in regard to the gathering and documenting of business requirements. In this installment, we will take a look at the next phase of a system implementation - software design and development. A metadata management system can help you save money and time in these areas as well.
For new system development, the system designers and developers can use the data stored in the business requirements process as a basis for their designs. Properly documented requirements leave little question as to the intent of the system, and reduce (or even eliminate) the need for follow-up meetings between the engineering staff and the business analysts. Measuring this saved time by the assigned resources is your first source of return for the investment.
Two other major areas of development that benefit greatly from metadata are Extract-Transform-Load (ETL) development and report development. Both functions need to know where data is located on various systems, which is something a metadata system does well. For ETL development, the location and mapping of source data elements is also available. Developers contribute specific information related to their activities to the metadata system to demonstrate fidelity in design to requirements and design considerations introduced to the system.
The major return on investment of a metadata system in the software development area is primarily related to the time saved by staff in information discovery and application. It is important to measure both pre-metadata-system and post-metadata-system metrics on developer and analyst time to accurately determine the money saved by implementing the metadata system.
In Part 3, we will tackle the potential cost saving to end-user reporting groups in your organization.
Photo, "physical metadata," by Nadya Peek (via Flickr)
Stephen Putman has over 20 years experience supporting client/server and internet-based operations from small offices to major corporations. He has extensive experience in a variety of front-end development tools, as well as relational database design and administration, and is extremely effective in project management and leadership roles.
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