I would like to encourage people who are striving to introduce data governance into their organization to have patience, persistence and perseverance. Most organizations are not ready to embrace all the aspects of data governance at the beginning but as the various elements of governance are introduced to address business issues, readiness will increase.
I define readiness as the things people are ready and willing to do. I have learned through painful experience that people will only do what they are ready to do.
As we introduce change, and the change is successful, people's readiness will increase. As people become more confident, their readiness increases. As they gain more support and recognition from others in the organization, their readiness increases. As they get specific feedback from their boss and peers, readiness increases. Business pressures will often increase people’s readiness to try new approaches.
Readiness can be increased by pressure from senior management to adopt new approaches.
Simple stated, data governance is the readiness of the organization to take ownership of the stewardship & management of the processes around data. The ownership will have to be shared with the IT folks who are very protective of the data. I think the IT folks are very good at implementing processes once they are defined. The processes need to built to serve the business, not the IT organization. A strong business leader who understands the power of information can be a great ally of data governance. These leaders need our support and cooperation.
Many times the business leaders need to see how information can help them transform the organization. With patience, persistence and perseverance we can help them transform the organization. They need support from the IT organization because the implementation requires work by the data warehousing people.
Working together to solve a common problem will increase the readiness to create the processes which will address the data governance issues.
I invite your comments and questions.
