How can you balance quality and speed when meeting data governance deadlines?

1 Define clear goals and scope

Before you start any data governance project, you need to have a clear understanding of what you want to achieve, why, and how. This means defining the goals, scope, deliverables, and success criteria of your project, as well as the roles and responsibilities of your team and other stakeholders. Having a clear vision and plan will help you prioritize your tasks, align your expectations, and avoid scope creep or unnecessary changes that can delay your project.

2 Use agile and iterative methods

Data governance is not a one-time activity, but a continuous and evolving process that requires frequent feedback and adaptation. Instead of following a rigid and linear approach, you can use agile and iterative methods to break down your project into smaller and manageable chunks, deliver value faster, and incorporate feedback and improvements along the way. For example, you can use the Scrum framework to organize your work into sprints, set up daily stand-ups, and conduct regular reviews and retrospectives.

4 Establish data quality metrics and thresholds

Data quality is a key aspect of data governance, but it can also be subjective and context-dependent. What constitutes good enough data quality for one project may not be the same for another. To avoid confusion and disputes, you need to establish data quality metrics and thresholds that measure and define the acceptable level of data quality for your project. For example, you can use metrics such as accuracy, completeness, timeliness, validity, and consistency to assess your data quality, and set thresholds such as minimum, target, and maximum values to indicate the range of acceptable data quality.

5 Communicate and collaborate effectively

Data governance is not a solo effort, but a collaborative one that involves multiple stakeholders, such as data owners, users, analysts, managers, and regulators. To ensure that your data governance project runs smoothly and meets the deadlines, you need to communicate and collaborate effectively with your stakeholders. This means keeping them informed of your progress, challenges, and achievements, soliciting their input and feedback, resolving any issues or conflicts, and aligning your goals and expectations. You can use communication and collaboration tools such as email, chat, video conferencing, and project management software to facilitate your data governance interactions.

6 Be flexible and adaptable

Data governance is not a static or fixed process, but a dynamic and flexible one that needs to adapt to changing data, business, and regulatory environments. You may encounter unexpected situations, such as data quality issues, technical glitches, stakeholder requests, or regulatory changes, that can affect your data governance project and deadlines. To cope with these situations, you need to be flexible and adaptable, and be ready to adjust your plans, processes, and priorities as needed. You also need to be realistic and transparent, and communicate any changes or delays to your stakeholders as soon as possible.

7 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?