Glossary

Data lineage

The trail revealing where a data item came from, which process captured or transformed it, which rule modified it, which system received it and which indicator used it.

The trail revealing where a data item came from, which process captured or transformed it, which rule modified it, which system received it and which indicator used it. It is the condition for trusting a figure before deciding on it.

It answers the question that sinks most dashboards in front of an auditor: where did this figure come from. Without lineage the answer is an engineer reconstructing the chain by hand, and their reconstruction is not evidence.

Related terms

Configuration item

A governable element that supports services and processes: applications, assets, technology components or critical resources.

Data model

The structuring of business concepts into entities, attributes, relationships, domains, keys and referential integrity.

Evidence

The set of data, documents, logs, states, decisions, signatures, timings and integrations that demonstrate what happened in a process instance.

Historisation

The preservation of how a data item changes over time, so its value at any past moment can be reconstructed.

Metadata

Data describing other data: their meaning, origin, format, value domain, owner and usage.