Perseverance

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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?

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. 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.

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Come and meet me - in person or online

• Big Data & AI World (free registration) -ExceL London

  • Event is Wednesday 8 and Thursday 9 March - I'll be there on Thursday.

  • If you use this link to register, then we get entered into a prize draw.

• Data and the CRO - an interactive discussion with some Chief Risk Officers to discuss the interactions between data teams and risk teams. 

  • Thursday 16 March at 12pm GMT, Online Open to all - register here.

  • Sponsorship opportunities available.

• Reduce, Reuse, Recycle - What to do When Data Governance Has Been Binned

  • Tuesday 9 May at IRM UK's Master Data Management and Data Governance Conference Europe.

  • I'll be at the conference on Tuesday 9th and Wednesday 10th.

  • As a speaker, I have a 10% discount code which I can share with you on request.

Are there any other events that you think I should attend or be speaking at? Let me know!

The Datazed of Data Governance training course

There are plenty of courses out there that will teach you about Data Governance, but they generally focus on theory, and some will help you with implementation skills.

Similarly, there are some one or two day courses out there which give you lots of information, then you are back at work and buried in the day job.

What I want to do is to train and advise you over several weeks. We'll go all the way from what you do when you start in the role, through to understanding your aims and objectives; delivering them; and then looking how you can develop your function/team and ultimately advance personally and professionally.

Of course we'll also cover the Data Governance theory as well.

I want to do this across a series (probably eight) sessions online, with interactive discussion. For the ones you can't make, recordings will be available.

Finally, there'll be a group set up for each cohort to connect during and beyond the course.

Interested? Click below to find out more.

Have a wonderful week,Charles