Data Governance » Presenting

Data Governance Metrics Dashboard

Brian — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 12:07:03 +0000

Metrics are very useful for many reasons. They can help you track your progress and give you a clear, non-subjective view of how you are doing. You can build goals around them and they are incredibly useful in presentations to others not so familiar with your program. I recently found myself having to give a spur-of-the-moment presentation to our executive sponsors, and I thought I’d give you a little insight on how I quickly put together a strong presentation with information I already had. I didn’t have to spend a lot of time developing material or crunching data, it was already available to me.

We all know that metrics are important to executives. They basically see the world in metrics… balance sheets, sales data, margins, share prices, etc. I’ve talked before about speaking the language of your audience and in this case it should be pretty obvious that elegant and clear metrics will be easily understood by the executives. My key metrics center around four different topics:

Number of Issues Opened in the past Quarter
Number of Issues Closed in the last Quarter
Segmentation of issues by type
Changes in the Data Maturity Model

I always put the numbers in a table, and then use a pie chart next to it so that they can visually see how the data is breaking down. This data is automatically tracked for me on a daily basis via a simple access database that tracks all of our issues. As issues are opened, closed and categorized the queries and reports in the background are automatically updated. Because of this my metrics are always current and ready to be presented at a moments notice.

So all I did was grab an old presentation that already had the table structures present and updated the numbers to what they currently are. The charts automatically updated and all I had left to do was clean up some talking points and detail some current issues and where executive involvement may be beneficial. I’d recommend tracking your issues in a software program that keeps you up-to-date, as our little Access database does for us.

Speak their language – Tailor your message!

Brian — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 14:15:29 +0000

Tailoring your message is an essential project management tool that for some comes natural, but can prove to be a difficult task for others. We’ve all been in ‘business meetings’ that have been hijacked by an IT person who goes way too in depth on programming logic, database design, and architecture plans. On the flip side, I’m sure many of us have also been in ‘IT meetings’ where a business stake holder goes way to in depth on financial trending, changes in legislation, and marketing initiatives.

While these people meant well, what they missed out on was the fact that you must tailor your message to your audience. This is particularly important for Data Governance, because you will be bridging the gap between the business and IT, not widening it. For your key messages, such as the value proposition and scope of the program, you must be able to explain it clearly to both IT and Business in terms that they not only understand (because they’ll likely understand it any way you say it), but also tailor it to their wants, needs, and activities that they deal with on a daily basis. This helps gets buy-in and establishes you as someone on ‘their side’.

Here is a little exercise:
1. Write down an elevator speech for all of your key messages. If you don’t have any, you can find tips on the Data Governance Elevator Speeches here. If you are stuck on what your key messages are, just start by providing a short answer for each of these questions: “What is Data Governance?” “What is your scope?” “What is the benefit of Data Governance?”

2. Now, put your answers in the left side of a chart with 5 columns. Each answer should be in its own row.

3. Across the top of the last four columns, title them “IT Worker”, “IT Exec”, “Biz Worker”, “Biz Exec”.

4. You probably know what to do now. Rewrite your elevator speech in the columns to the right of them, but this time tailor the message to the specific audience that the column pertains to.

AD: Data management disciplines can be applied to include the digital image of paper based information. This unified approach between managing digital and paper based assets can improve access control, provide an improved audit trail, and reduce the operational costs traditionally associated with managing paper archives.

5. Once you have done that for all of your messages swoop back to your first column and title it “Mixed Audience”. Go back down that column, and rewrite your original elevator speeches so that they are targeted towards a mixed audience of IT and Business workers and Execs.

6. Use these!

I hope that helps!

Be Visible, Champion the Data Governance Cause

Brian — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 13:23:08 +0000

It is important that your Data Governance program stay visible throughout the organization. This means getting out there and doing presentations, getting your talking points in whenever the opportunity presents itself, volunteering to speak at all-hands meetings and business team meetings, etc. A few posts back I talked about the much needed ‘Elevator Speech‘ and I can’t emphasize enough how important it is to have those ready at a moments notice. Additionally though, you’ll need talking points and presentations that last 15-30 minutes and longer for meetings with other IT and Business units, high level executive presentation, mid-level business teams, and any other audience where Data Governance can bring value.

Its important to know your audience when speaking or presenting and you need to specifically tailor your message to what they want to hear. Executives want to know the value you bring to the organization – Remember “Make Money, Reduce Cost, or Mitigate Risk. Period” ?? Make sure your presentation for your executives centers around at least one of those important issues.

For your business units, they are going to want to know what you can do for them. Are you going to help them do their jobs better? Make things more efficient? Fix a problem that is causing them particular pain? Set yourself a goal of getting in front of at least 2 new business teams each month – even if this goes against your corporate culture. Make it casual, don’t be stuffy… just explain what Data Governance is all about and how it could help them and then listen to what they have say. You may learn a lot if you listen closely.

Finally, if you are meeting with an IT team, you’ll want to come from a technical perspective but don’t gloss over the business value. I’ve found that even though you are in a room full of IT people, they want to know what value the program has for the company and are always interested in what the business is discussing in the meetings. So, you might start out by talking about Data Governance and what the goals are, talk about the technical tools being used, review the data fields that are of particular interest right now and the systems that are being reviewed, then close with the ‘recent happenings’ from the Data Governance Stewardship council.

It is absolutely imperative that you work on your soft skills to ensure you Data Governance program’s success.

If you have to, send out a survey to the rest of the company, specifically the ones you are doing the work for, to see what your customer ratings are. The feedback on how they rate you, and what you can do to improve, will help you even more in championing your cause.

The Proverbial Elevator Speech

Brian — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 11:22:46 +0000

There will come a time when you’ll step into the elevator with a VP, CIO, CEO, or some other executive and they’ll inevitable say, “So how is everything going?” While you can always tell them about your son’s tee-ball practice or daughter’s ballet recital, wouldn’t it be better if you immediately could say, “We’re working on the principle loan amount with the Data Governance Council to ensure that it is being calculated consistently across all systems. When we’re done, we can be absolutely sure this field is correct”.

Its extremely important that you have a couple of good ten second elevator speeches ready for cases just like this. You’ll want Data Governance elevator speeches such as:

a high-level explanation of what Data Governance is
the current up-to-the-minute status of the program
a convincing speech that highlights a particular need you might have, etc.

Having these down on paper reinforces them in your mind, so that you are ready at a moments notice.

This has saved my butt on more than one occasion. I hope this little tid-bit helps you, too!

Have You Made Progress with Your Data Governance Program?

Brian — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 13:44:18 +0000

If your answer is a resounding “YES!” (and I hope it is), I’d strongly encourage you to present at a conference! You can read my previous posts Data Governance Conference – San Francisco, CA and More on the Data Governance Conference to get a feel for what goes on at these conferences. Its just like any other professional conference, accept that everyone around you is a Data Governance practitioner at their organization, is a data governance consultant, or is about to start Data Governance and wants to learn.

Presenting gives you a couple of benefits both within and outside of your organization. In your organization it gives both you and your program credibility you can’t buy. It shows you are respected by your peers and it gives your sponsors some confidence that they selected the right person for the initiative. Let your council as well as others know that you’ll be out of town to “present on the success our organization has had with Data Governance at the abc conference”.

At the conference you’ll make great contacts and hear a bunch of really good presentations on Data Governance theory and practice. I’ve always had great takeaways from these conferences in the past that have really made them worth the price of admission.

You can present on any number of topics. Here are a few broad ideas to get you thinking:

How you built your program from the ground up
Your Data Governance communication plan
What worked and what didn’t
How not to do Data Governance – What we did wrong, and what we’d do next time
A really neat item that worked for you
Data Governance resources – what you read and looked to for advice

Here are a few ‘mashups’ that would make for very compelling presentations:

Project Management and Data Governance
SOA and Data Governance
Case study: Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) compliance and Data Governance

My Disclaimer: People have asked me why I don’t present… My answer is that my organization is pretty old-fashioned and rigid about outside presentations. Rather than bother with the red tape, I started this blog (note I don’t give my full name or my organization to maintain a sort of anonymity) to give my view of Data Governance.