Starting a Data Governance Program

Getting Started

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.
Starting a Data Governance Program
  • Those stakeholders will want to know the WHO / WHAT / WHEN / WHERE / WHY / HOW of your program before they decide to support it, so you’ll need to anticipate their questions and have preliminary answers, even if they’re only assumptions until you do your actual program design.

 

You’ll want to build the type of program that your stakeholders will be excited about. The Data Governance programs we’ve seen that are the most successful are ones with a clear focus, metrics that excite leadership, a value proposition that everyone can get behind, and a clear message.

Don’t worry if this isn’t real obvious to you. After all, we’re all familiar with the concept of not being able to see the forest for the trees. What if you ARE one of the trees?

Consider getting a fresh viewpoint from someone within your organization (or from outside) who can help you describe your vision and set an approach to:

    1. Develop a value statement
    2. Prepare a roadmap
    3. Plan and fund
    4. Design
    5. Deploy
    6. Govern
    7. Monitor, measure, report

      Read Next:

      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

      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

      Focus Areas for Data Governance

      All Data Governance programs are not alike. Quite the contrary: programs can use the same framework, employ the same processes, and still appear very different. Why is this? It’s because of what the organization is trying to make decisions about or enforce rules for....
      Read More

      Focus Areas for Data Governance: Privacy, Compliance, Security

      This type of program typically comes into existence because of concerns about Data Information Security controls, or compliance. Compliance, in this context, may refer to regulatory compliance, contractual compliance, or compliance with internal requirements.This...
      Read More

      Focus Areas for Data Governance: Data Quality

      This type of program typically comes into existence because of issues around the quality, integrity, or usability of data. It may be sponsored by a Data Quality group or a business team that needs better quality data. (For example: Data Acquisition or  Mergers &...
      Read More

      Focus Areas for Data Governance: Architecture, Integration

      This type of program typically comes into existence in conjunction with a major system acquisition, development effort, or update that requires new levels of cross-functional decision-making and accountabilities.What other types of groups and initiatives might want...
      Read More

      Choosing Governance Models

      It’s important to define the organizational structure of your Data Governance program. But before you can do that you have to define your governance model at a higher level. You need to consider what types of decisions your governance bodies will be called upon to...
      Read More

      Working with Data Stewards

      Approaches to Assigning Data Ownership and Stewardship Organizations can take multiple approaches to assigning Data Owners and Data Stewards for enterprise data. In doing so, they need to consider several factors and answer the following questions.Question #1:  Should...
      Read More

      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

      Engaging Stewards and Stakeholders

      It seems like there are two types of Data Governance and Stewardship programs: Thriving ones, with highly-engaged stakeholders, and Ones whose futures are in question, since stakeholders and stewards are only sporadically involved or give only weak support to the...
      Read More