Governance Communications

Processes and Alignments

At a Data Governance Conference in Orlando, Florida (USA), a group of managers of successful Data Governance programs reached a startling consensus: They agreed that Data Governance is actually somewhere between 80 and 95% communications!

Governance Communications

How can this be? They said (and Data Governance Institute agrees) that the actual crafting of rules and implementing of governance controls take relatively little time. What takes the bulk of time is working with Data Stakeholders to understand options, to reach consensus, to translate one group’s position to language another can understand, to facilitate decision-making sessions, and to report status and progress.

In short, these working professionals concluded, it is the ability of a Data Governance worker to communicate with stakeholders and stewards that makes a Data Governance program successful.

Data Governance workers need to know how to create Communication Plans. They need to be able to create effective communication pieces: Elevator Speeches, Impact Statements, Presentations, Governance Status Reports, Stakeholder emails, and more.

 

See Also: The DGI Data Governance Communications Guide

Read Next:

Focus Areas for Data Governance: Policy, Standards, Strategy

This type of program typically comes into existence because some group within the organization needs support from a cross-functional leadership body. For example, companies moving from silo development to enterprise systems may find their application development teams...
Read More

Implementing Change Management

Most organizations have string change management – or at least change control – mechanisms for technology. They usually have change management for software applications. They have change management for websites. And yet, many organizations do not practice structured...
Read More

Funding Models: Funding Data Governance

The DGI Data Governance Framework addresses funding two ways: Obtaining funding and support is a phase in the Data Governance Life Cycle Funding is part of one of the components of the framework. What type of funding is needed? Data Governance programs need to...
Read More

Governance and Issue Resolution

One of the three most important jobs of a Data Governance program is to help resolve data-related issues. These may be conflicting data definitions, data usage concerns, or problems with how data is sourced, how it is integrated, how it is protected, or a myriad of...
Read More

Setting Governance Roles and Responsibilities

Who does what in a Data Governance program? First, a group of individuals (or a hierarchy of groups) representing a cross-section of stakeholder groups makes a set of rules in the form of policies, standards, requirements, guidelines, or data definitions. (Or, they...
Read More

Starting a Data Governance Program

A successful Data Governance program does not begin with the design of the program! Before you start deciding who goes on what committee, you should be clear about your program’s value statement. You should have developed a roadmap to share with stakeholders. Those...
Read More

Assigning Data Ownership

One of the tenets of Data Governance is that enterprise data doesn’t “belong” to individuals. It is an asset that belongs to the enterprise. Still, it needs to be managed…

Read More

Data Governance Program Phases

As you perform the activities needed to gain support and funding, remember that your program may plan to address multiple focus areas. Each new effort should be introduced using the seven steps of the life cycle. Even specific governance-led projects, such as creating a set of data standards, will want to follow the Data Governance Life Cycle steps.

Read More

Focus Areas for Data Governance: Data Warehouses and Business Intelligence (BI)

This type of program typically comes into existence in conjunction with a specific data warehouse, data mart, or BI tool. These types of efforts require tough data-related decisions, so organizations often implement governance to help make initial decisions, to...
Read More

Defining Data Governance

How you define your program will influence your ability to manage it — to keep all participants on focus, in sync, and striving toward the same goals.

Read More