Page 198 - Data Architecture

Chapter 5.1: The Siloed Application Environment

Fig. 5.1.4 How the application was built.

Indeed, whole books and methodologies are built on this simple notion. And to an extent,

these books and methodologies are correct. Applications must be based on end user
requirements.

However, there is a major flaw with this line of thinking. The flaw is that only the direct
user of the systems is used to determine the requirements. The thinking is that if ALL the
people—direct users and indirect users of the application—are considered, it will take a
very long amount of time to build the application. Therefore, when gathering the
requirements of the system, only the direct users of the system are considered. In doing
so, the gathering of requirements takes a finite amount of time.

So, who are these indirect users of the application? Typically, the indirect end user of the
application includes (but is not limited to) marketing, sales, finance, and accounting.

And when the application was built and just being installed, the direct end user was quite
pleased. But shortly thereafter, the dissatisfaction begins to come when the indirect users
of the system began to voice their complaint. Some of the things the indirect user of the
data complained about were as follows:

Data definitions that were different from those used by the developer
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