Change Management and Data Governance

Years ago, I worked for a large company that spent time and effort on change management. It has been popular with corporations that plan significant changes as they grow or down-size. Companies, particularly high-tech companies, use change management to be more agile and respond to rapid changes in the market.

As I read through the large amount of information on change management, I’m struck by the parallels between change management and data governance. The focus is on processes. It ensures that no matter what changes happen in a corporation, whether it’s downsizing or rapid growth, significant changes are implemented in an orderly fashion and make everyone more effective.

On the other hand, humans are resistant to change. Change management aims to gain buy-in from management to achieve the organization's goal of an orderly and effective transformation. Sound familiar? Data governance speaks to this ability to manage data properly, no matter what growth spurts, mergers or downsizing occurs. It is about changing the hearts and minds of individuals to better manage data and achieve more success while doing so.

Change Management Models
As you examine data governance models, look toward change management models that have been developed by vendors and analysts in the change management space.  One that struck my attention was the ADKAR model developed by a company called Prosci. In this model, there are five specific stages that must be realized in order for an organization to successfully change. They include:

• Awareness - An organization must know why a specific change is necessary.
• Desire - The organizational must have the motivation and desire to participate in the call for change.
• Knowledge – The organization must know how to change. Knowing why you must change is not enough.
• Ability - Every individual in the company must implement new skills and processes to make the necessary changes happen.
• Reinforcement - Individuals must sustain the changes, making them the new behavior, averting the tendency to revert back to their old processes.

These same factors can be applied when assessing how to change our own teams to manage data more effectively.  Positive change will only come if you work on all of these factors.

I often talk about business users and IT working together to solve the data governance problem. By looking at the extensive information available on change management, you can learn a lot about making changes for data governance.

The Down Economy and Data Integration

Vendors, writers and analysts are generating a lot of buzz about the poor economic growth conditions in the world. It’s true that in tough times, large, well-managed companies tend to put off IT purchases until the picture gets a bit rosier. Some speculate that the poor economy will affect data integration vendors and their ability to advance big projects with customers. Yet, I don’t think it will have a deep or lasting impact. Here are just some of the signs still seem to point to a strong data integration economy.

Stephen Swoyer at TDWI wrote a very interesting article that attempts to prove that data integration and BI projects are going full-steam ahead, despite a lock-down on spending in other areas.

Research from Forrester seems to suggest that IT job cuts in 2009 won’t be as steep as they were in the 2001/2002 dot com bubble burst. Forrester says that the US market for jobs in information technology will not escape the recession, with total jobs in IT occupations down by 1.2% in 2009, but the pain will be relatively mild compared with past recessions. (You have to be a Forrester customer to get this report.)

You can read the article by Doug Henschen from Intelligent Enterprise for further proof on the impact of BI and real time analytics. The article contains success stories from Wal-Mart, Kimberly-Clark and Goodyear, too.

On this topic, SAP BusinessObjects recently asked me if I’d blog about their upcoming webinar on this topic entitled: Defy the Times: Business Growth in a Weak Economy. The concept of the webinar being that you can use business intelligence and analytics to cut operating expenses and discretionary spending and improve efficiencies. It might be a helpful webinar if you’re on a data warehouse team and trying to prove your importance to management during this economic down-turn. Use vendors to help you provide third-party confirmation of your value.

So, is the poor economy threatening the data integration economy? I don’t think so. When you look at the problems of growing data volumes and the value of data integration, I don’t see how these positive stories can change any time soon. You can run out of money, but the world will never run out of data.