by Angela Guess
Rick Sherman recently wrote that “people and policies need to be on the front burner when you initiate a Master Data Management (MDM) or Customer Data Integration (CDI) program. Data governance (which is needed along with an integration competency center (ICC)) often doesn’t get the commitment it should. I noted that there are two bullets in white papers and marketing PowerPoint slides that are oversimplified — Executive sponsorship and Business and IT involvement. Oversimplifying these two areas is a mistake. A big one.”
Sherman continues, “Executive sponsorship is usually interpreted to mean business executives provide funding to establish a program or buy products. Although funding is an element of sponsorship, simply writing a check and then waiting for results is not enough. Business executives’ sponsorship needs to include organizational commitment from the executive level to the business people ‘in the trenches,’ devoting some of their time not just to kick-off a data governance program but also to keep it going on a daily basis. Business executives, from corporate and line-of-business groups, need to be involved in establishing the mindset that data is a corporate asset and needs to be managed just as carefully as any other valuable asset that the enterprise owns. Executives need to commit resources and time from people at all levels of the enterprise to define and manage data.”
On the topic of business and IT involvement, Sherman states, “Business and IT involvement is usually interpreted as IT driving the data governance process with business people called into meetings to define data. Although IT generally kick-starts the data governance process and often does the ‘heavy lifting’ in the program through implementation within the data integration and business intelligence solutions, the business truly has to embrace and eventually drive the data governance process. Besides, not always having the business truly engaged means that often the business involvement is not at the right level. I refer to the solution to this quandary with my clients as the Goldilocks syndrome: ‘Not too hot, not too cold, but just right.’”
photo credit: Otterman56
