Implementing Data Governance: Think Like A Vogon

Recently I received a note from a prior colleague. He was in the midst of trying to implement data governance at an organization but was getting severe pushback, basically he saw he was headed for project failure. I had a couple of pieces of advice for him which I'll share here as I'm certain he's not the only person struggling to get data governance off the ground.

Establishing data governance at an organization is not easy, it will take time and chances are that the first approach you try may not work. In my opinion if you're working on something with a name along the lines of "Data Governance Project" then you've got a problem. For me, establishing data governance isn't a project. It's not something that can be up and running in a few short weeks or months, but rather I think of it as an initiative - something to be worked on over time, building toward an objective with the flexibility to change tack or even retreat, regroup and try again depending upon the appetite of the organization and the receptiveness of the executive and key stakeholders.

Which brings me to my first piece of advice: Think Like A Vogon. If you weren't lucky enough to be a teenager in the 1970s and 1980s then you may not know what a Vogon is so a little back story may be in order. The Vogons appeared in Douglas Adams' book / radio play / TV series The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy. Their battle cry was "resistance is useless!". If you're going to embark on a data governance initiative then you need to adopt this as your mantra. You need to keep telling yourself not to give up, you will strike resistance, but you can't stop at the first hurdle (or the second or third for that matter) . Keep telling yourself that resistance is useless because you will establish data governance in the end!

The Vogons used their battle cry as the answer to any dissenting argument or position. Their common approach was to simply keep shouting "RESISTANCE IS USELESS!" at whomever didn't agree with them.

This brings me to my second piece of advice: Think Like a Vogon, Don't Act Like a Vogon. Use the mantra as a means to keep you going when you face pushback or you struggle to get buy in for your ideas, not as something to beat people over the head with. If your only trick is the compliance line, e.g. telling / forcing people to comply with data governance rules because they are the rules then chances are you've missed the value pitch for data governance and you're going about it for all of the wrong reasons anyway. Stop telling people they have to comply and start telling them what's in it for them if they do come along for the ride. Show what past problems might have been avoided had some data governance been in place or find how some small form of data governance will drive some demonstrable short term savings and go and implement that small piece. Sell the value!

The Vogons were not just a race of bureaucrats, they also wrote poetry . Unfortunately this poetry was commonly thought to be the third worst in the universe. Essentially their poetry was  nonsense verse and decidedly unpleasant to be subjected to.

Which brings me to my third piece of advice: Make Your Artifacts More Appealing Than Vogon Poetry. If you have a ponderous Charter, a rambling Terms of Reference or information that the Data Stewards will find it hard to make sense of, then invest some time in making it more useful. Make your communications with your stakeholders clear and consistent, make your value pitch concise and tangible and construct the material for your stewards so that it's functional and easy to use.  My final piece of advice is to make the data governance initiative visible. Let people know about it and what it can do for them. Spend some time and effort raising the profile. If you can get others excited by its potential then you may get support, and even pull, for data governance from within the business. Don't be afraid to let others know about your data governance initiative. Believe me, it's not something to be hidden away in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying "Beware of the Leopard."

I'll leave you to your Vogon Googling. I'm off to find a Dentrassi to make me a nice cup of tea!

Rethinking Your EIM Program

I've not looked at a Gartner Hype Cycle in a while, but I'm pretty sure if I did I'd find Enterprise Information Management (EIM) Programs heading into the Trough of Disillusionment. From what I'm hearing these programs are doing it tough and its not surprising.  EIM aims and value can be hard to articulate, I know I've struggled at times with ours . If you have an EIM program what's your elevator pitch? Phrases like improved decision making, better data management, and leveraging the data asset abound but chances are that many decision makers are coming to see those as little more than motherhood statements, particularly if there's been an EIM program in place for a while with few real benefits yet realised.  Although there may have been initial agreement around the problems to be solved and excitement around the promise of the program your sponsors may no longer really be signed up for the journey and are probably now struggling to see the way there.  


Perhaps it's time to rethink the strategy we take toward reaching our EIM goals. Rather than one big program maybe the use of strategic themes might work better. Use themes to chunk your nebulous program down to smaller quick projects which deliver toward and enable a common theme and focus the efforts and imaginations of people around a few key areas and projects at a time. It's easier for people to see value along the way yet (if you keep your eye on the longer tern prize and larger goals) still possible to get to the bigger picture by drawing synergies from projects along the way. Some of the themes I'm promoting right now include making information findable and believable, and the use of templates to tie information and process together and allow nimble reuse when new business initiatives arise. 


Using strategic themes also means it's much easier for people to "get it" and you, as the architect of the broader EIM initiative, will have better control over how they perceive what's important to do next. Equally importantly you'll have a better chance that they won't "get the wrong end of the stick" and become focused on the wrong things and put their energy into work that really delivers little to advance your true EIM aims.  Another plus is that it's more likely that you'll have people wanting to get involved (and hence get better people) if they can see what is going to be delivered in the smaller projects within the theme. 


If your team structure allows it then look to embed account managers in to the various business areas to get early signals and information about what needs are out there and weave these into the strategic theme sets where appropriate. Doing so will get people on the train.  Let the inertia build and then use that inertia to drive through those pieces of work which are less tangible - whether they be advancing data stewardship, building out the enterprise data model, or something else.


I believe this chunking and strategic themes approach will become more important across the coming 12 -24 months,  particularly if your company places more stock in initiatives with strong business cases and has an over representation of business improvement projects among the successfully funded initiatives and pushes those with less obvious or quantifiable benefits to the back of the queue. This approach will also give you the flexibility to be nimble and stay aligned with business strategies and priorities as they change rather than locking you in to a full year's budget cycle many months before the first work even begins. 


With this approach there are bound to be trade offs but, hey, at least you're moving forward and making (some) progress toward your EIM goals. And that's got to be better than the program being killed entirely.