Fast Tracking Data Governance

The awareness of the strategic importance of data exists.

The awareness of the positive effects of governed data exists.

Yet most organizations are still slow adopters of data governance frameworks, or non-adopters at all - risking poor strategic decision making and misallocation of critical resources.

In a certain way it is understandable, as the implementation of a data governance framework can sometimes be an overwhelming challenge, highly disruptive and prone to failure.

The way it is approached is critical for its success, and any valid operationalization of a data governance frameworks need at least to address the following:

• Leadership buy-in and commitment - Data governance is a process that needs buy-in from every level of an organization, otherwise, it will constantly stumble into resistance pouches within the organization.

• Alignment with business goals and objectives - Data governance must be supported on strong business cases, anchored on clear and measurable business objectives, otherwise it will risk being viewed as another siloed IT project with no perceived value from the business side.

• Focus on strategic data - Approaching data governance in a holistic perspective will inevitably lead to a lack of focus, resulting on a misalignment with the business objectives and incapability to deliver value.

• Time to deliver results - Data governance implementation can be expensive, time and resource consuming and span through long time frames and take some time to deliver ROI, so it is critical to develop the capability to deliver results within short time frames.

Failing to address these issues will most likely result on a failure of any data governance efforts.

Go Tactical

Tactics

The art or skill of employing available means to accomplish an end.

I firmly believe that data governance is to be approached strategically, framed within a robust data strategy and systematically.

However, after many years in the field, experience has been showing me that a straight, holistic, and standard methodology doesn’t overcome the obstacles in the way and making the option for tactical initiatives can be more plausible and efficient, and act as a motor from within the organization for a full Data Governance program.

A tactical approach is about addressing a specific problem with known consequences with specific and focused initiatives, so we can define a tactical initiative as having:

• Reasonable funding model.

• Targeted.

• Focused effort.

• Short timeframes.

• Delivering targeted return on a short timeframe.

It is easier to help someone that asks for help than persuading someone that it needs help.

Start with business areas than can clearly identify and measure the business impact of data on their processes, in every organization the opportunities to identify these cases are abundant. Minding that most of the time it is not about identifying the actions that can reach the best ROI but identifying who is the one that has a problem that needs to be targeted, assessed, and mitigated quickly.

Once a critical pain point is identified, there is business stakeholder that can passionately and effectively articulate the impacts of poorly governed in his own processes and that will be eager to defend the project.

Having the business stakeholder working by your side will accelerate the process of quickly move from the findings to specific actions.

Although preparation is essential, and a critical factor for the success of any initiative, it is also common that the time and effort spent preparing overcomes the time spent doing.

Aiming at starting with and enterprise-wide data governance initiative, making sure that all the conditions are perfect to start, will indefinitely delay the starting date.

Do not get lost in getting ready, turn activities in to actions. As soon as possible. No matter how small.

• Prioritize – Start with an end in mind and a clear business objective.

• Start small – Start with a small but business relevant initiative.

• Measure – Gather business metrics that can be linked to the data governance initiative.

• Replicate – Replicate your success stories across the organization.

Start a small initiative in a department or business unit, with a small business or data domain.

Monitor and assess the results, implement corrective actions, modifying the practices to respond to the specific needs, making data governance part of the business process.

After this, results will turn into energy, energy into action, momentum steps in and lends a hand.