How can you identify data lineage and metadata management requirements for different data domains?

Don’t do the assessment on your own, always involve business stakeholders that have expertise in terms of value and risk (e.g. legal, infosec, internal audit, sales). Not only does that help you assess value and risk per domain more accurately, it also builds up the network of stakeholders that will help make decisions for the data owners and stewards as well. Leverage everybody’s expertise and acknowledge their contributions, it’s the key to maintain a collaborative data governance approach.

Start by tackling unresolved data issues within the domains/ across key business processes. Prioritize based on their impact on business goals, costs, risks, & value. High-revenue generating domains need extra attention. E.g.: Take domains impacting customer experience or under regulatory watch. Detailed data lineage & metadata in the customer domain can help understand customer behavior better, leading to improved personalization & customer satisfaction. Or in logistics & delivery, having a clear view on E2E data flow can streamline operations, reduce delivery times & improve the overall customer experience. This not only reduces errors, risks but also iteratively boosts further business buy-in & data management practices downstream.

Thank you for sharing your insights on the management of data lineage and metadata for different data domains. Your approach to identifying key stakeholders and defining their roles based on their responsibilities and expertise is spot on. In my experience, the distinction you made between the stakeholders involved in customer data versus operational data is particularly insightful. It highlights the importance of tailoring data governance strategies to the specific needs and perspectives of each data domain.

Don't let tool selection for metadata management/data lineage be an IT-only exercise, get the business folks in from the get-go. Understand their data worries, technical needs, and turn these into 'must-have' features for your metadata tool requirements. Discuss the benefits of business glossary, stewardship and how a catalog/metadata tool can tackle their issues. Consider a pre-market analysis before issuing the RFP, the tool landscape is evolving by the day and invite vendors for POCs, importantly, involve business folks again in evaluating vendors/ final selection since they are the key end-users. Look for a tool that's user-friendly, supports collaboration, has strong search capabilities, integrates well with the existing landscape.

As cliched as it is - Don't try to boil the ocean. ;) Take an iterative approach, starting with bite-sized, high-priority business use cases. Use accelerators if you've got them, and focus on small cases that can make a big impact across the business. Change can be scary and it is common to see resistance, so have a solid change management program to spread awareness and get everyone on board. Get your business roles in place - owners, stewards, and their tech-savvy counterparts. Set up metrics to track your progress and success. And frequently gather feedback to refine and improve the setup/ workflows/processes. In short, take it step by step approach, involve relevant people, drive change, measure success, and adapt to evolving trends.

Each of the domain will also need to identify the Critical Data Elements for the data lineage to be populated and linked to the respective business glossaries and/or data catalog. This will help to provide the end to end flow of the data with the appropriate business terms to ensure proper understanding of the usage.

business requirements - how are the stakeholders planning to use the tool? user requirements - what would the users expect the tool to be able to do? e.g. ability to "crowdsource"? comment? Give a thumbs up? how about data governance administrator requirements? Does it need to integrate with a ticketing tool? So if there's an comment that requires to be actioned on, a ticket can be created easily?

Then evaluate existing tools and processes: Assess your organization's existing tools and processes for data lineage and metadata management. Determine if they are sufficient to meet the identified requirements or if additional tools or improvements are needed. Finally implement a metadata management solution: If your existing tools and processes are inadequate, consider implementing a dedicated metadata management solution. This could be a specialized software or a combination of tools that can help you automate metadata capture, lineage tracking, and metadata governance.