Taking a Human Approach to Data Governance

Taking a Human Approach to Data Governance

Successful data governance requires organizations to address human factors such as cultural change, which is the greatest obstacle to implementation.

Data maturity: The additional uses of data depend on the organization’s data maturity as follows:

• None – documentation & physical databases
• Initial – conceptual, logical & physical design
• Managed – governance metadata
• Advanced – business glossaries
• Optimized – data modeling

Process maturity: The effects of process maturity on data governance include the following:

• None – documentation
• Initial – BPM (business process modeling)
• Managed – process improvement
• Advanced – process design
• Optimized – mature data processing methodologies

Human factors: The human factors that impede data governance include:

• Resistance to change
• Inadequate planning
• Poorly defined goals

Change management: The sources of change resistance include extra work, uncertainty, and ripple effect. The solutions to these resistances include:

• Securing the appropriate human resources and rewards for extra effort
• Creating a process for the change with simple steps and clear timeline
• Identifying affected parties of the change and considering their point of view

Summary: The information capabilities of most organizations is already poor and continuing to decline, which directly impacts data governance efforts. Organizations need a high level of data and process maturity to implement data governance successfully. They should also use quantifiable metrics to measure their success in data governance over the long term.