The immediate requirement is Business Glossary governance. The issue is semantic: two departments use the same term but assign different meanings to it.
A governed business glossary establishes agreed terminology, definitions, synonyms, related concepts, ownership, and usage context. Resolving the definition does not necessarily mean forcing every business process to use one operational rule; there may be legitimate variants. The critical requirement is that those variants be explicitly named and documented so consumers understand the distinction.
Metadata Management provides the structures needed to preserve and distribute these definitions. DAMA's public Metadata Management guidance identifies business glossaries and data dictionaries as core mechanisms for improving shared understanding.
This semantic clarity is fundamental to Data Quality. A completeness or accuracy score for "Active Customer" is meaningless if departments measure different populations under the same label.
After the definition is governed, technical metadata should link the glossary concept to physical fields, calculations, reports, and quality rules.
Reference Topics: DAMA-DMBOK2 — Business Glossary; Metadata Management; Data Stewardship; Semantic Consistency; Data Quality Rules.
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