Several MDM programs out there are in development and about to go to production.  Several others are struggling in production as they try to move the program into a second subject area or to engage more publishing or subscribing systems to the information.  Others need to extend the data governance beyond a single business group.

Few have made the leap to successfully setting up their MDM program as a fully functioning member of the 'major system' ecosystem of the company.  The guidelines in these blog entries will help those shops make that transition and address the questions that the REST of the company may have about MDM.  It is absolutely essential that MDM be properly positioned to these important evaluators of the program success.

Enterprise MDM cannot be successful "in a vacuum" - built to meet the need of a single application/subject area that is well-known.  Building MDM with this hyper-focus to the exclusion of all concerns for scalability results in just what I am seeing now: MDM re-dos and multiple MDMs where there could be one, enterprise MDM.

These questions include (again, from the perspective of those not in the MDM team):

What is MDM?

What data is available there?

Do I have to use MDM's data?

Do I really have to use MDM's data?  Who will care if I don't?

What if the MDM data is not suitable for my application needs?

How long does it take to incorporate my data?

Whose role is it to add data to MDM?

Is it push or pull?

I'm just going to bring this third-party data into my application, not MDM, OK?

Is my need an extension of a subject area or a new one?

Who do I talk to about MDM?

Do I have to contribute my data?

How do I modify the existing MDM workflows?

Does the MDM team carry a separate project plan for my need?

Who builds the plan and manages those tasks?

How do I unit test, do quality assurance testing, etc. with MDM data?

Just knowing these questions could trigger the necessary action, but in case it doesn't, I'll keep posting here (and you can as well) some tips to setting up shop with MDM.