Wednesday, July 28, 2010

DGDQI Viewer Mail

From time to time, people read my blog or book and contact me to chat about data governance and data quality. I welcome it. It’s great to talk to people in the industry and hear their concerns.

Occasionally, I see things in my in-box that bother me, though.  Here is one item that I’ll address in a post. The names have been changed to protect the innocent.

A public relations firm asked:

Hi Steve,
I wonder if you could answer these questions for me.
- What are the key business drivers for the advent of data governance software solutions?
- What industries can best take advantage of data governance software solutions?
- Do you see cloud computing-based data governance solutions developing?

I couldn’t answer these questions, because they all pre-supposed that data governance is a software solution.  It made me wonder if I have made myself clear enough on the fact that data governance is mostly about changing the hearts and minds of your colleagues to re-think their opinion of data and its importance.  Data governance is a company’s mindful decision that information is important and they’re going to start leveraging it. Yes, technology can help, but a complete data governance software solution would have more features than a Workchamp XL Swiss Army Knife. It would have to include data profiling, data quality, data integration, business process management, master data management, wikis, a messaging platform, a toothpick and a nail file in order to be complete. 

Can you put all this on the cloud?  Yes.  Can you put the hearts and minds of your company on a cloud?  If only it were that easy...

1 comment:

Garnie Bolling said...

Steve, excellent post.

You know, most folks (executives) love to support DG, but when it comes to investing, sharing risk, or allowing staff to participate, well, things fall apart. The simple fact, it is all well and good, but how do we make it real.

Practical approaches need to be implemented, from process, people and technology. Some clients want a big bang approach, while others want the "let me take it around the block a few times" approach. For the second type of clients, I propose Data Steward functions... where we build on success of stewards, and bubble them up to be real policies across the enterprise... while the Big Bang theorists we go with a top down structure, that has to have investment, people and influence... easier said than done.

thanks for writing about this, and of course, while camping I still bring my Swiss Army Knife, to be prepared :)

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed here are my own and don't necessarily reflect the opinion of my employer. The material written here is copyright (c) 2010 by Steve Sarsfield. To request permission to reuse, please e-mail me.