Why is my Data Governance Program not impactful?

First published on my website (Why is my Data Governance Program not impactful? — AHUJA CONSULTING LIMITED)

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Why do so many Data Governance programs start in a blaze of glory and then fizzle out after a time as they fade into obscurity?

The typical fanfare of a new Data Governance initiative is usually short-lived.? From being the big thing with executive momentum behind them, they tend to end up as a BAU team that struggles to influence and engage with the business and is largely seen as a box-ticking irrelevance.

Three reasons

There can be many reasons why a Data Governance program is not providing the level of impact that it should.?

I want to focus on three of the main culprits that I’ve come across.?

These are as follows:

·??????? Failure to measure the right things

·??????? Failure to identify the right owners

·??????? Failure to build a relevant DG Framework

Failure to measure the right things

When talking to organisations about how they are governing their data, I still come across many who seem to be focusing on data quality for the sake of data quality.

What do I mean by this?

They have a set of Data Quality Indicators but the underlying Critical Data Elements (CDEs) do not tie back to a core business process or strategic objective.?

Their DQ dashboards, scores and metrics were pulled out of the box from the ETL tools they’re using, rather than consulting with the business on what is business critical.

So they are going through the motions of building data quality measures, but don’t fully understand why those measures are important to the business.?

Simply measuring the quality of data without properly understanding the relevance of of it to the business is futile.?? The end result is a set of metrics that the business has no interest in monitoring.?

A Data Governance exhibit that’s pulled out of the bag for when the auditors come knocking, but not much more!

Not only is this a waste of time, but it represents the Data Governance team in a negative light as being mere box tickers and not business enablers.?

As a CDO or Head of Data Governance, which one of those categorisations would you want to be labelled as?

In a previous article, here, I discussed how you should identify your organisation’s critical data.?

You need to identify CDEs by reference to the critical processes in which the data plays a part.? This is the data that the business has an interest in.?

You can then produce a set of quality metrics that are actionable and will result in meaningful dialogue with your stakeholders.?

Failure to identify the right data owners

This brings me to my next point.?

No Data Governance initiative can exist without active participation from the business.? Quite simply, without this involvement, your data governance endeavours will fail.?

Data Governance is a team sport; not simply something done in a darkened room by the CDO.

The role of the data owner, within the business, is pivotal to the success of your data governance initiative.?

You’re looking for future change agents in the organisation.? They therefore need to fit the following criteria:

·??????? Seniority: be sufficiently senior

·??????? Change: have the capacity for change

·??????? Gravitas: have the right level of gravitas

It stands to reason then, that identifying the right data owners is one of your most important tasks.?

In a previous article, here, I have given my thoughts on how to do this.?

You need to ensure they have a sufficient interest in the data that you are looking for them to be accountable for.? They simply will not have the requisite level of motivation to take accountability for a domain if their actual interest in the data is negligible.?

Yet, so often I have seen individuals who have taken on these roles who do not possess the right level of interest and are therefore not fully engaged.?

Engaging data owners is an exercise that takes time and needs to be undertaken carefully.

Closely tied to this is the subject of capacity for change.?

If data owners are your future change agents, then you need to identify those with the capacity for change.??

It may be that a particular individual is senior enough and has sufficient interest in the data.? But they may not have the right capacity for change.?

Data Governance is change management.? Done right, it’s about changing the way an organisation manages its data as an asset.?? It’s a departure from the siloed treatment of data to a recognition that data is cross-functional and therefore needs to be managed as such.?

Therefore, your owners need to have the ability to lead this change and to step up and take responsibility for the data across the domain; not just their silo.?

I’ve written about this here.

Failure to Build a Relevant Framework

There is no such thing as an industry-standard framework.? Every framework needs to be bespoke if you want it to land.

Your Data Governance Framework needs to be tailored to your organisation if you want the business to be properly engaged.?

Case in point…

In one organisation, the business were drowning with the plethora of excel spreadsheets being used to run critical processes.? There was a dire need to get a handle on the core spreadsheets and to put in place some basic standards and controls.?

Yet the DG Framework did not have any processes or standards concerned with End User Computing.?

The reason?

End User Computing is not technically part of data governance came the reply.

Whilst I would tend to agree, this completely missed the point.? The Framework was not really fit for purpose in deliberately ignoring this business need.?

As a consequence, it was seen as irrelevant whilst the business soldiered on, swamped by their cottage industry Excel factories!

Tackling this issue head-on, however, helped simplify their operations and provided more certainty over their data.? As a result, the business were more open to the other possibilities available to them through properly managing their data.

Being Business Savvy

These are just three root causes of Data Governance programs that fail to achieve impact.? Of course, there are others.?

But all of this demonstrates the need to be vigilant about ensuring that we focus first and foremost on business need.?

It’s not about the data!

Having done so, we need to invest the time to?ensure that the business is appropriately engaged and that the right people are encouraged to step up and assume the important roles that your DG program is reliant upon to deliver meaningful and lasting impact.?

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In the next article, we’ll focus on what your business data controls can reveal about your organisation’s maturity.?

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