I like to highlight the similarity of familiar everyday things to enterprise data quality and compliance management. Today I’ve been thinking about the game of whac-a-mole!

Whac-a-mole (Mogura Taiji) was invented in 1975 by Kazuo Yamada of the Japanese amusement ride company, TOGO. A typical Whac-A-Mole machine consists of a waist-level cabinet with a play area and display screen, and a large, soft, black mallet. Five holes in the play area top are filled with small, plastic, cartoonish moles, which pop up at random. Points are scored by whacking each mole as it appears. The faster the reaction, the higher the score.

If you think of a mole in this game as a data issue and the mallet as your way of dealing with it, then you’ll perhaps see the analogy(?). No matter how many times you “whack it”, a mole just pops up somewhere else. Some days you may do well and others not so much. The game is unrelenting, the moles never stop.

To get a high score in the game, you need to be at the top of your game – agile, fast and decisive. Even the most skilled of players will struggle if there are a greater number of moles (and holes) than expected or the moles are appearing at a faster rate.

In data management, the scale of the challenge is such that the number of data issues (moles and holes) is a lot higher and more frequent than expected and when accompanied with the added problem that the resources to resolve the issues (the mallets) are few and far between. The result is that the moles are popping up and frolicking about laughing at you.

Ideally if you knew how many moles there are and where & when they would appear you would be much better at the game. You could prepare the right number of your mallets (data owners/stewards) to play and ensure they know how to whack the moles to achieve a permanent fix.

Infoboss puts you in the best shape to win your organisation’s data whac-a-mole game. To discover more, please get in touch.