by Angela Guess
A new article looks at how data governance efforts might benefit from a bit of flexibility. It begins, “Data governance requires the coordination of a complex combination of a myriad of factors, including executive sponsorship, funding, decision rights, arbitration of conflicting priorities… But sometimes this emphasis on enforcing policies makes data governance sound like it’s all about rules. In their book Practical Wisdom, Barry Schwartz and Kenneth Sharpe use the Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle as a guide to explain that although rules are important, what is more important is ‘knowing the proper thing to aim at in any practice, wanting to aim at it, having the skill to figure out how to achieve it in a particular context, and then doing it.’”
The article adds, “Although there’s a tendency to ignore the existing practical wisdom of the organization, successful data governance is not about systematically applying rules or following rigid procedures, and precisely because the dynamic challenges faced, and overcome daily, by business analysts, data stewards, technical architects, and others, exemplify today’s constantly changing business world. But this doesn’t mean that effective data governance policies can’t be implemented. It simply means that instead of focusing on who should lead the way (i.e., top-down or bottom-up), we should focus on what the rules of data governance are made of.”
