Data collection and distribution are governed by complex policies and operational procedures, and implementation of data flows involves diverse service organizations in multiple divisions of the enterprise. Receiving, processing and routing data to the points where it is needed, as well as ensuring that only authorized personnel have access to data is key, but the systems and personnel involved in various steps of the processes have little insight into the end-to-end flows and the accompanying constraints, making it almost impossible to provide all of the information needed to optimize individual tasks for each flow at the time of planning.
Initially, route planning for data was performed manually, based on SME knowledge in a very small group of people. Expanding the numbers of planners was an obvious choice, but this led to significant inconsistencies in route implementation, and made capacity extrapolations more difficult. Frequently, the ‘as-built’ flows were not well documented, resulting in high diagnostic costs when a flow was not behaving normally.
Numerous services are involved in the end-to-end flow of the data; interfaces with many of the intermediary systems were not completely described, and unannounced changes often resulted in broad flow disruption.
Progression of the implementation tasks was tracked via a simple in-line comment service, making it necessary to read the entire list of comments in order to determine work status for an individual flow.
