Add one, remove one
In the world of home-organizing, there's the "one in, one out" rule. Simply put, for every new item that enters your home, one similar item must leave, helping to maintain a constant level of possessions and prevent clutter accumulation.
This would be a great rule for database managers when considering adding new fields of data to collect!
If staff wants to add a new field to collect a new data point, the first question is "Which data point/field are we going to remove?"
I'm only half-joking. Too often I see my clients adding new fields of data to collect while simultaneously not keeping up with the other data points they are supposed to be already collecting.
So when you think about adding a new field, ask yourself: "Are there other data fields we could remove while we're adding this new one?"
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