Data Governance software generally falls into three categories:
- Team workspaces
- Repositories holding policies, business rules, data definitions, metadata
- Data Management, MDM, ETL, or Data Quality software that includes governance or stewardship functionality.
It can be difficult to develop apples-to-apples comparisons of products and services, especially for offerings in category #3. Here are some tips to help you build questions, set requirements, and evaluate software.
First, start with the basics. For Data Governance tools - just like for any other type of application - start with standard tool selection criteria and considerations:
- vendor information
- pricing
- maintenance costs and other costs
- functionality and features
- suites versus stand-alone tools
- best-of-breed considerations
- customer service
- implementation assistance
- training
- availability of consultants and the depth of consulting experience available
- vendor stability
- merger and acquisition considerations.
Next, you’ll want to consider the information you collect in the context of your organization’s culture and environment:
- the organizational structures and silos that will be using these tools
- people and roles
- accountability and controls
- processes and workflow
- policies and standards that apply to these tools
- architectural considerations
- timeline considerations
- cross-project interdependencies
- the expertise of your workforce.
You’ll also want to determine whether you need to collect requirements or approvals from business stakeholders. This may be necessary if the tools
- fall subject to compliance or legal requirements
- are considered part of key control sets
- are included in approved business processes or workflows that are subject to approval by your internal or external auditors
- are part of processes or procedures subject to formal change control
- fall subject to approval by your IT Portfolio Management group, or
- the tools could influence your ability to fulfill Service Level Agreements (SLAs) or other contractual requirements.
And finally, you need to determine whether your organization's Project Management Office (PMO) and/or an Application Portfolio Management group will be involved in the selection of software applications. These groups may very well have their own set of requirements you need to include in your software selection process. Here are some keywords often found in RFP requirements.
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