Lesson 9 — Metrics, Decision Rules & Final Mental Model
Metric families
Records Management: compliance, retention/disposition adherence, retrieval time, classification/indexing quality, training, cost and integration with business processes.
E-discovery: time/cost to identify and collect, processing/review efficiency, de-duplication/reduction, responsiveness and lifecycle performance.
ECM program: adoption, satisfaction, migration, workflow/paper reduction, complaints, risk mitigation and business benefits.
ECM operations: users, uptime, storage utilization, search/retrieval performance, workflow volume and service cost.
Precision and Recall
Precision = relevant retrieved ÷ all retrieved
Recall = relevant retrieved ÷ all relevant that exist
Example: 100 documents retrieved, 80 relevant; 100 relevant documents exist overall.
Precision = 80/100 = 80%.
Recall = 80/100 = 80%.
Decision clue
- too many irrelevant results → precision problem;
- known relevant items are missing → recall problem.
18 high-value decision rules
- Content vs Document = information vs container.
- Document vs Record = communication/work object vs retained evidence.
- Document Management vs Records Management = file/version/workflow vs evidentiary/retention/legal/disposition control.
- Content Model vs IA = reusable content structure vs structure/navigation/search of the information space.
- Content Metadata vs content = context/classification vs substantive information.
- Synonym Ring vs Authority List = equals vs preferred term + variants.
- Taxonomy vs Thesaurus vs Ontology = classify vs richer term relations vs formal semantic domain model.
- Push vs Pull vs Interactive = scheduled delivery vs user retrieval vs dynamic/two-way exchange.
- Formal vs Revision vs Custody = authorized impact/change process vs version history/notification vs safe holding.
- Backup vs Retention = recovery copy vs intentional lifecycle preservation.
- Retention vs Disposition = how long vs end-of-life action.
- Retention vs Legal Hold = normal lifecycle vs litigation preservation override.
- Identification vs Preservation = find scope vs stop destruction.
- Collection vs Processing vs Review = acquire vs prepare/reduce vs decide responsiveness/privilege.
- ECM vs repository = enterprise program/capability vs one storage tool.
- Controlled Vocabulary vs Folksonomy = governed terms vs social tags.
- Information Governance vs Content Management = enterprise decision rights/oversight vs operational content organization/use.
- Precision vs Recall = purity vs reach.
Final chapter story
Unstructured information becomes governable when it is captured with context; described by Metadata and controlled vocabulary; structured for reuse; versioned according to risk; classified as record when evidence requires it; retained for defined obligations; protected from destruction under legal hold; discoverable through a defensible EDRM process; organized through content strategy and IA; operated through DMS/Records/CMS/ECM capabilities; governed by enterprise decision rights; and measured for retrieval, compliance, efficiency and risk.