Data must be trusted to be useful

What can you do with data you don’t trust?

Let’s take an example.

I’ve been looking at some data about our cloud costs, and that data is suggesting a clear action I can take to reduce our costs. Which sounds great!

But, it doesn’t look quite right… So I try to verify it.

And the more I attempt to verify it, the more I’m doubting it.

So, I’m not going to take the action it suggests.

And I’m not going to trust other data from the same source until it has been proved to me that its accurate.

If you don’t trust your data:

• You can’t take an action
• You can’t base decisions on it
• You can’t build your service on it (else you risk losing the trust of your users)

Data must be trusted to be useful.