Data Governance

Michael — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 01:02:49 +0000

Welcome to the Data Governance Blog! On this website we’ll arm you with the knowledge you’ll need to research, launch, and run a successful data governance program within your organization. Whether you are at a Fortune 500 company or a small non-profit organization, the data governance principles remain the same and they will bring value to your company.

Data governance is not a hardware, software, or manpower solution. It is an organizational strategy and methodology for documenting and implementing business rules and controls around your organizations valuable data. It is bringing cross-functional teams together to identify data issues that impact the company or organization as a whole. It is working with the business and IT to develop solutions for critical data issues. You do all of this through a data governance council made up of leaders across the business working with their teams for research, analysis, and implementation.

Feel free to browse around the site and explore the many links to articles, vendors, and resources. From data governance frameworks to data governance best practices and strategy, we strive to be the only source you need for every DG related.

To help get you jump started on the Data Governance blog, feel free to click around the links on the site. Also, here is some suggested reading on the Data Governance Blog (these have been the most popular articles) is:

Building a Data Governance Council
A Data Governance Framework
Information from a past Data Governance Conference, part 2 is here
5 Days to building a Data Governance Maturity Model
An Information Management Fairy Tale
A Data Governance Definition
8 Reasons Data Governance Fails
Branding Your Data Governance Program

“IT People are like Forklift Drivers”

Michael — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 13:25:17 +0000

One of the key components of data governance is assisting in determining who the data stewards (some say data owners) are for the critical and/or enterprise data. I tend to like the term steward because ‘owner’ implies full-control over the data, but nonetheless, the terms are generally used synonymously.

It is extremely important that the data governance office provides guidance to the business on who the ‘go to person’ is for the different data domains. IT doesn’t own the data, the business does (despite what anyone may tell you!). A great analogy on how “IT People are like Forklift Drivers” is provided here by Michael R. Farnum. He wrote it so clearly that I won’t even bother to elaborate, but rather urge you to check out his blog post.

Master Data Management and Business Intelligence

Michael — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 12:48:52 +0000

Data Governance, Master Data Management, and Business Intelligence – these 3 make-up the trifecta of new data management disciplines that are providing better controls, understanding, and knowledge of an organizations data.

I wanted to highlight two sites. The first site I wanted to highlight is the Master Data Management blog. This site looks fairly new, but seems to provide a nice foundation on what Master Data Management is and how you can implement it within your organization. You’ll certainly need more information than what is provided on the site so you may want to check out some of the links they have on the site to other MDM and Data Management sites.

The other site I wanted to highlight is a Business Intelligence Jobs site. It provides a nice overview on how to get a job in any of the Data Management fields. Business Intelligence is hot right now and many organizations are looking to spend money on this worthwhile cause. It may be worth your time to look into business intelligence.

Lastly, don’t forget about our very own Data Governance blog for all of your Data Governance needs!

Trillium Master Data Management (MDM) Webinar

Michael — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 17:05:58 +0000

I just received word on this webinar on 3/25 and thought I’d share the link: Trillium MDM Webinar. Just click on ‘enroll’ to the right of the first event.

Feel free to leave comments about it in the comments section, and if you know of any others please post in the comments section as well.

An Information Management Fairy Tale

Michael — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 13:30:51 +0000

I found this video on YouTube and thought it was great. It is embedded below, but if that doesn’t work for you here is the URL: http://youtube.com/watch?v=TbzQvswrOTw

Feel free to leave thoughts and comments on this below!

Corporate Data Governance Best Practices

Michael — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 13:45:10 +0000

I found this great data governance white paper via a press release. It surveyed many different companies working on data governance and compiled the findings into fascinating results. Take a look at the PDF here.

On another note, I haven’t been posting for a while because I’ve been super busy with a home construction project. I want to give a shoutout to a couple companies who have been doing a great job for us. Kempster Construction, Pendley Plumbers, and
Ausmalbilder have all been terrific, and without their help the house would still be a mess.

Business Rule Concepts

Michael — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 12:15:15 +0000

I have the book ‘Business Rule Concepts‘ by Ronald G. Ross to give away. It retails for $39.99 at Amazon. The sub-title is “Getting to the Point of Knowledge” and it focuses on practical solutions for urgent business challenges through business rule management.

If you are interested, all I’m looking for is a short post or article to share with the readers here. Send me a short email here about an experience you’ve had, something you’ve learned, something you’ve done wrong, etc in the data management field and you’ll have a really good chance at getting this $40 book for free.

Where do I start?

Michael — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 12:30:20 +0000

I came across an interesting Q&A article with Ravi Shankar, Director of Product Marketing at Siperian. The questions were about Master Data Management and Data Governance (or what they call Master Data Governance). His answer to the question, ‘What is Data Governance?’ is quite nice…

Siperian calls it “Master Data Governance”, and we define it as “the orchestration of people, policies, procedures and technology to manage enterprise data availability, usability, integrity and security for business process efficiency and compliance.”

They go on to ask him how an organization can start data governance without being overwhelmed. I think he makes a nice point that data governance should not be applied to all data… it is too expensive and time consuming to do that.

My thought is that before you ever start data governance, you need to figure out why you need data governance. What data is most important? What data is being abused? If you put the answers to these two questions in a Venn Diagram, the place where it overlaps is likely a good start for the scope.

You can read the full (brief) article here.

Data Governance Framework / Whitepaper

Michael — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 11:30:54 +0000

The Data Governance Institute has published a Data Governance Framework/Whitepaper here. There is some good information in it, whether you are just staring or have been at it for a long time.

On another note, I’ve been working on some other e-commerce ventures lately (hence my sporadic posting here), and I’ve found a great online payment processing company that has helped me immensely. I’m posting it here in case anyone else is in the same boat as me, where you’re launching a bunch of e-commerce stuff and you need a good payment processing option.

Does anyone have experience developing a data governance strategy?

Michael — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 12:45:54 +0000

In my post ‘8 Reasons why Data Governance fails‘, Carol S asked, “Does anyone have experience in developing a data governance strategy?”. I haven’t talked with her about this yet, but I’d like to recommend the following high-level path to launching Data Governance in an organization. This is very high level (read: quick & dirty), so you’ll need to take time and break these steps down into discrete tasks.

1. Start a Data Initiative to fix a few specific problems
Before the words ‘data governance’ are ever uttered, start an initiative to fix a few problems that span the enterprise. Make sure these are problems that bother people so that you’ll get buy-in. As part of this initiative, build a business team that will work on the problems (they’ll later become your Data Stewardship Council).

2. Define the scope of a Data Governance program
You should determine what needs to be governed. Is it Enterprise Data, Master data, or the Data Warehouse?

3. Introduce Data Governance
Make sure that #1 above is a wild success. Then tell everyone, “Lets keep this momentum going. Lets tackle some of the other problems that are bothering everyone”.

4. Form your Data Governance Stewardship Council
It’ll likely be the same people who helped you in your first data initiative. Make sure that every business area affected by your scope is involved.

5. Identify a Chief Data Steward
Read my post “Building your Stewardship Council” and “More on Identifying the Lead Steward” for more information on this.

6. Develop a strategy to work your scope
Remember, this is a program, not a project. You need a plan that is ongoing and factors in Data Quality.

7. Kick-off with the Business and IT
Here are some tips for kicking off your meeting.

8. Work the strategy.
Read this blog for ongoing tips