"A man with a watch knows what time it is. A man with two watches is never sure." — Segal's Law
Single source of truth (SSoT) is a practice that ensures everyone in an organization bases business decisions on the same data. This idea originates as a data management practice in the field of information technology, but avoiding multiple copies of information is a valuable practice throughout an organization.
A single source of truth guarantees that everyone in an organization has access to the same information. That means there are no work silos keeping people from knowing important information. Working from a single version of the truth, ensures nothing will be concealed from anyone and you’ll all be on the same wavelength. By keeping your records accessible to everyone (ideally cloud-based), you can prevent yourself and your team mates from getting lost in multiple versions of the truth, thus:
A single source of truth guarantees that everyone in an organization has access to the same information. That means there are no work silos keeping people from knowing important information. Working from a single version of the truth, ensures nothing will be concealed from anyone and you’ll all be on the same wavelength. By keeping your records accessible to everyone (ideally cloud-based), you can prevent yourself and your team mates from getting lost in multiple versions of the truth, thus:
To practice SSoT, designate your SSoT and communicate that to the team. I can be as simple as creating a folder for brand assets like logos, a Notion document for team OKRs, or a spreadsheet for payroll data. The particular tools, locations, and file formats matter less than the team-wide agreement to maintain a single, canonical source of information for a given task or project.
Generally, the SSoT should be accessible to everyone. By keeping your records accessible in a centralized location, you can prevent yourself and your colleagues from getting lost in multiple versions of the truth/the same file.
Teach everyone how to contribute to the single-source of truth, no exceptions. You may need to require regular contributions from everyone to ensure accuracy.
When maintaining multiple copes of information, edits should flow down from the SSoT.
Sometimes we need to keep multiple copies of information. For example, we may have a brand logo file in various formats and sizes. In this case, it’s useful to maintain a single “master” file in a non-lossy format (such as a TIFF or PSD file) which is used to generate all other derived files.
We may also have information duplicated between a knowledgebase article and a training video (or with Alice—a Chrome extension that provides context-sensitive tips for Buyers). Here too, we should intelligently manage updates by designating, say, the knowledgebase as the canonical source, editing that, and then updating training content, and Alice accordingly.
It’s essentially the same practice as when synchronizing multiple clocks: it’s best to select a master clock against which the other clocks are matched.