Nobody ever started a data governance programme to deliver immediate results

First the reminders:

1. dataZED Get Together on 6 September with Alex Plenty, CDO at Lloyd's of London, sponsored by Pyramid Analytics. We’ll be looking at how you can manage your Data Governance and Data Quality roles in the oncoming wave of AI.
   
   Alex is an insightful and outspoken speaker and worth coming to hear from.
   
   Wednesday 6 September in London EC3 from 4pm to 5pm, with drinks nearby afterwards.
   
   Click here to sign up
   
   

2. dataZED of Data Events calendar. August is quiet for obvious reasons, but September is filling up.
   
   Share an event and View the calendar
   
   

3. Less than one week to the start of the season!
   
   dataZED Fantasy Premier League, raising funds for Data and Tech Aid. Read more here and Register here.
   

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I would like to expand the scope of The Datazed of Data Governance to include more voices, and I know that there are many people who have written, or are ready to write, the occasional piece without commiting to a regular newsletter.

If you would like to be a guest writer, then feel free to get in touch. You can submit something for inclusion which you have already written, or chat to me about your ideas.

I was going to skip the newsletter over the holiday period, but the readership has been growing over the year, so instead I’m re-sharing a popular article from March.

The power of perseverance

Nobody ever started a data governance programme to deliver immediate results.

You might find some quick wins, and these are essential to build up your credibility with stakeholders, but it takes longer to deliver real value.

I was given a personal example recently when I got a positive reply from one of these Datazed of Data Governance emails - three months later!

Why does it take so long for data governance to pay off?

We don't roll out data governance as a big bang

Well, we don't if we want to be successful.

If you consider the components of a data governance framework (people, process, tools), then it takes time to obtain the information you need from the business, and then to build out the content to a level sufficient to be useful.

If you try and launch data ownership, a data dictionary, a lineage map and a data quality process all at once, then you will find that you will be asking for a lot of time and insight from your key subject matter experts.

Not only is this hard to obtain, but it's also putting an unfair load on people who are already busy with their day jobs.

Our data community will take time to add value

First you will work to identify your Data Owners and Data Stewards. You'll do some training so they know what to do; and some of them will engage.

You'll start collating a series of data issues, which will be of differing levels of impact, severity and solvability (is that a word?).

The first set of data issues won't be the critical ones.

As the data community gets used to the idea of challenging their data and flagging issues, the significant data issues will start to emerge.

Then they need to be solved.

Again, this doesn't happen overnight.

Data Governance is not a project

Whilst kicking off Data Governance, or implementing tooling, may well be structured as a project; Data Governance itself is an ongoing activity that needs to become part of your regular business activity.

For example, it's not just about populating your data glossary, but it's about refining those definitions and building out its scope over time.

Your data lineage will be continually changing and diagrams from last year will no longer be accurate.

Where Data Owners have taken on a new role, a new person will need to be trained in what to do, and why they need to it.

Data Governance is not about immediate results. Success comes from good habits, carried out consistently.

To discuss this, or anything else around Data Governance and Data Quality, then click here to get some time with me.

And if you think this article might help someone else, then forward this email or share the link with them. It’s through your referrals that I can grow this newsletter and reach more people.

Have a wonderful week,
Charles

Don’t forget!

1. dataZED Get Together on 6 September with Alex Plenty, CDO at Lloyd's of London. Click here to sign up

2. dataZED of Data Events calendar. Share an event and View the calendar

3. dataZED Fantasy Premier League, raising funds for Data and Tech Aid. Read more here and Register here.

You’ll find a tagged, searchable website of these newsletters at datazed.beehiiv.com, where you can also subscribe to get them sent straight to your inbox.