Entries Tagged 'Project Management' ↓

There really is something to be said about dividing up your council to work on separate issues and then reconvening to discuss and approve the results. I’ve used this technique recently for some of the issues on our tracking sheet that ‘just won’t go away’. You probably have these too… whether they be important but nagging issues with the legacy systems or a business unit who just won’t respond so you can close something out. In any case, over time, these outstanding issues will multiply and the best method I’ve found it so assign them out to your stewards to have them worked on. I’ve also found that there are a few keys to success when doing this.
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On the first day at the Information and Data Quality Conference, I attended the session, “Using Data Profiling for Proactive Data Quality Improvement“. That session was for the first half of the day, so for the second half I attended the Len Silverston session titled “Power and Politics in Data Quality Improvement Efforts“. This was a great session that had very little to do with data theory and data management, and a lot to do with interoffice dynamics. The session opened up with the question, “What is the biggest problem in data quality today?” Many good answers were tossed out by the attendees, but I think the answer that Len submitted trumped them all… read on for the answer.
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If you have been following the open source movement (wikipedia page), you’re probably very excited about the products that are coming out of it. In short, open source means that the product is free, peer-edited, and often times better than its cost-based counterparts. Take Firefox for example; Firefox is a web browser that runs faster than Internet Explorer, has a far superior security system (fewer exploits and viruses) than Internet Explorer, and this was all created by a not-for-profit foundation called Mozilla with the help of thousands of volunteers. You can click here to install .
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It’s no secret that I’m a big supporter of bringing web 2.0 ideas into the corporate world. There is certainly something to be said about these technologies that are being born out of the second generation of successful websites. The ideas around web 2.0 are collaboration, communication, and community. If you haven’t looked into these technologies, the following links should give you a good foundation on what web 2.0 is all about:

• Web 2.0 on Wikipedia
• Web 2.0 defined on O’Reilly

Web 2.0 sites that you’d recognize are:

• Flickr
• YouTube
• Wikipedia
• Wordpress (blogging platform, which this blog uses)

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I got an email after my post on Tuesday about working with your Data Modelers. It was from a guy who works at a mid-size company that runs pretty lean, meaning he doesn’t have much support from the IT staff because they are busy on other projects. He said he didn’t have data modeling tools at his disposal, so how can he track his Data Governance Program for the long-term?

I thought about this for a while. I’m so used to a large corporation where there are lots of tools and resources available (although they aren’t waiting for you to ask them to do something) so I had to think about this one for a bit…. What would I do if I was in his situation?
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I recently updated the Wikipedia Data Governance listing to display “Maximize the income generation potential of data” as one of the key reasons a company undertakes Data Governance. The other items they had listed, before my update, were to:

- Increase consistency & confidence in decision making
- Decrease the risk of regulatory fines
- Improve data security
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Its important to take notes on everything! This is a general project management tip that is of particular use for Data Governance. Because this is YOUR program, you need to know what works and what doesn’t so that 2 years from now, when things are getting a little sluggish and you need to spice it up, you can revert back to your notes and see…”ahhh, That time we had a meeting and broke into working groups to fix 4 different items in one meeting was really successful and got everyone involved”. You are going to be doing so much with your program that you just won’t be able to remember everything. So, you’ll want to take notes on what works and what doesn’t!

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Projects and Programs fail for a variety of reasons.  Data Governance is a particularly tough program, and I’d like to see as many programs succeed as possible.  Below are the top reasons I’ve seen that have caused Data Governance programs to fail.

1. No Success Shown
A good way to kill your program is to show no success out of the gate. Very quickly people will become disinterested, restless, and you’ll notice participate will wane. To prevent this, get a quick win that really excites upper management as well as the stewards. Fix a pain point for them or clean up something that everyone knows is a problem. Whatever you do, get a quick win.

2. Loss of Executive Buy-in
This can happen for a lot of reasons, including the other 7 listed here, so the key to this is to keep your executive sponsors up-to-date and engaged. You can do this through traditional status reporting as well as drop-in meetings and updates when you have success. Have a communication plan that keeps your executive sponsor and interested upper management engaged and updated.

3. Not Having a Proper Foundation
A recent article that I blogged on stated that 80% of Data Governance projects fail. Now, I’m not knocking the authors or anything, but the conclusions that were drawn were pretty obvious. If you start Data Governance before you have the proper foundation you are going to fail. A proper foundation includes proper data management for your organization, data models, metadata, etc. Basically, you need to at least have the basic foundation for what Data Governance will indeed govern. If you don’t have metadata, for instance, wouldn’t you first start a Metadata project to build up your data dictionary before starting your Data Governance Program? I would.
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Recurring meetings are a must. If you are a new program, once a week, no questions asked. If you’ve got the ball rolling, everyone is participating and knows their role, every other week works nicely. But no matter what, make sure there is an understanding among your team that they must attend these meetings.

Make it easy on yourself by holding the meeting at the same time of day in the same location. You could have it every Thursday from 10-11AM, or every other Wednesday at 9:30… whatever works best for you. The key here is that you need to make sure people are attending regularly. A really good tip is to… Continue reading →

I’m always talking about being visible within your organization. You don’t want Data Governance to be forgotten about, you want it to be an integral part of the business. As such, you should do everything you can to be a champion for Data Governance. One of the things that really worked for me was setting up the Data Governance intranet site. At most organizations its pretty easy to grab some space on your corporate intranet and get going, and thats great. Lots of projects and programs start out with intranet sites that quickly go stale - don’t do that!

You want your intranet site to be updated often with news, minutes, updates, and other relevant and timely information. If you keep your site up-to-date, you can ensure that your audience will return often to stay in-the-loop. Continue reading →