Data Quality Management Flashcards

Which data quality dimension is most directly impacted when a batch ETL job runs 18 hours late, delivering yesterday's inventory levels to a real-time fulfillment system?

Answer: Timeliness

Timeliness measures whether data is available when needed; an 18-hour delay makes otherwise accurate data unfit for real-time fulfillment decisions.

A data steward is tasked with establishing data quality thresholds. What should these thresholds be based on?

Answer: Business impact analysis and the tolerance level for each use case

Thresholds should reflect how much data quality degradation a specific business process or decision can tolerate before outcomes are materially harmed.

What is 'data standardization' in the context of data quality improvement?

Answer: Transforming data into consistent formats, codes, and representations across systems

Data standardization transforms varied representations (e.g., 'NY', 'New York', 'N.Y.') into a single canonical form to enable accurate comparison and integration.

When a data quality rule has a high false-positive rate, what is the most likely operational consequence?

Answer: Valid records are incorrectly flagged, causing unnecessary rework and business disruption

High false-positive rates cause valid data to be rejected or quarantined, eroding trust in the DQ program and creating costly manual review cycles.

Which of the following best describes a 'data quality firewall'?

Answer: A control point that prevents data below a quality threshold from entering downstream systems

A data quality firewall is an architectural control that intercepts data in-flight and blocks or quarantines records that fail defined quality rules before they propagate downstream.

In root cause analysis for data quality issues, which approach traces a defect backward through the data pipeline to identify its origin?

Answer: Five Whys

The Five Whys technique iteratively asks 'why did this happen?' to move from the symptom back through contributing causes to the root origin of a defect.

Which organizational model places data quality accountability closest to where data is created or consumed?

Answer: Federated / distributed stewardship model

A federated model embeds data quality accountability in business domains, ensuring the people who understand the data best are responsible for its quality.