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Customer Journey
Introduction
The Data Governance Journey requires a structured and repeatable approach to ensure that core business requirements and outcomes are captured early in the process, and then revisited throughout the journey. This approach will help to maintain focus and alignment for the overall program and show value for your organization. It applies from a technology and platform standpoint as well, in that the ability to prove the technology in your environment -- designed in a scalable manner -- will help to drive adoption though achievable increments.
As we look to implement Data Governance, keep these Success Factors in mind.
- Identify the business drivers for change – always tie governance activities to business value
- Drive business ownership of data governance, with IT support and alignment
- Formalize data governance roles and job responsibilities and recognize these in individual objectives
- Establish clear and quantifiable measures of success, and report these regularly
- Define pilot “Quick Win” projects with targeted goals
- Think big, but start small – build incremental value over time
- Operationalize data governance – embed this into existing business processes
- Define and Implement a robust communications plan that engages all levels of the organization
- Prioritize the program and invest in people, process, and technology to deliver the roadmap
- Implement a scalable and extensible platform architecture with common tools, standards, and practices
Note that all phases below require tight synchronization between the technical and business workstreams.
Plan
The Planning phase for business involves initially assessing where your organization is at from a maturity perspective. Do you have appropriate leadership in place, and do have sponsorship and resources allocated? It’s valuable to have a maturity workshop to determine your capabilities from an overall governance perspective, while also evaluating your technology capability to support governance. This will give you an initial roadmap identifying the key areas of focus as the rollout continues.
We must also capture a clear definition of the Business Objectives for governance. These may be targeting a specific business area or use case, such as “Improve customer satisfaction” or “Comply with new Privacy laws”. In other instances, companies look at a particular Domain or Business Area like Customer Service or Compliance as a means to put boundaries around a well-defined pilot use case. This business use case is critical for driving adoption and acceptance of the governance strategy and technology.
The Use Case then helps to define more focused requirements for answering key scoping questions to be used in the Implementation phase, such as Stewards and the Glossaries and Taxonomies that will be in first use. The Planning phase is also where Metrics and Measures of Success are defined for the program; these must be communicated and then measured throughout the process.
Technical Planning involves several key components that can be accomplished in parallel. We will need to understand the target environment’s architecture, understanding not only where Informatica products will operating, but how they will interface with existing data driven applications. This will include platforming and on-prem / off-prem strategies as well as the security model and overall topology of the combined platform.
This phase also includes the creation of operational runbooks that guide operation, troubleshooting, and sizing of the application as they expand in usage over time.
Implement
The Implementation phase involves a similar set of complimentary Business and Technical activities.
Having defined the core Use Cases and high-level Roadmap, we will need to define an overall Charter for the program that will include the core processes, roles, and responsibilities involved in managing a Governance Program. In mature organizations, the roles and processes will be extensions of current operating structure. In less mature scenarios, they may be developed from scratch.
As noted in the Planning stage, the measurements and metrics that will help determine the success of the program need to be defined in more detail. These may be factors such as the number of stewards, their level of activity, the number of systems and attributes onboarded, or possibly the breadth of the governance model across multiple lines of business. This may impact the way that information is collected to monitor the adoption of the program.
A communication and Change Management plan aligned with the rollout plan is a critical component in this phase.
From a technical perspective, it will be critical to develop the overall Operating Model for the governance platform, including any configuration or metadata field updates. Consistent onboarding procedures for stewards must also be developed as well as new systems and databases that will support the core use case and establish patterns for future additions.
The establishment of an Enablement plan supports the onboarding efforts as well, by using the Pilot Itinerary execution plan to bring new stewards into the platform through targeted training plans for common tasks such as establishing glossaries and curating technical content.
A critical success factor during the Implement phase is early inclusion of the onboarding stewards, supported by hands on community enablement.
Monitor
After implementation, the systems are deployed and Stewards are realizing the value of the enhanced insight, visibility, and streamlined processes. The Monitoring aspect of the governance program is critical to keep data fresh and ensure that stewards are active and engaged.
Key activities in this space will include active monitoring of the metrics captured in the Planning stage. For example, how many Stewards are active in the platform and is that a growing number? Are common processes and activities being executed efficiently and is the quality of data improving?
When Axon is implemented as the Governance dashboard, Informatica recommends either using the Dashboard and Widget capabilities or developing custom reports with key measures to monitor successful rollout.
Examples of common processes typically executed in Data Governance programs include:
- New Steward onboarding
- New System onboarding
- System retirement
- Conflict Resolution
- Regulatory Review
This is only a subset, each organization will have its own additional processes that will leverage the governance program. Documenting these, assigning appropriate Data Owners and Stewards across the processes, and assigning SLAs for efficient operation is critical.
As the organization grows the program, scope can be broadened the user base increased. With this will come considerations and adaption for technical scalability and growth; establishing repeatable techniques for assessing performance and addressing user adoption and enablement will be critical to maintain growth.
Optimize
To Optimize a Governance program, work with sponsors and stakeholders (with a goal of continuous improvement) to assess what is working well and what is challenging. Identify new analytics uses cases and applications.
A measured rollout is important for the long term success of the program, bringing new data and stewards into the program in a manner that brings quick wins and value. The adoption is always enhanced by having success stories that can be circulated in company road shows to build momentum. Governance programs are very process centric and require solid Change Management approaches in line with the technology rollout.
The Informatica platform is very flexible and supports enhancement and growth of the governance program over time; adding additional use cases to the data governance program will also enhance the power and coverage of the solution. For example, an organization may start with core technically oriented use cases that provide visibility into core technical data. Subsequent phases may then bring in Privacy and Personal data Policies, while a third phase may look to align with essential Business Processes.
Having a strong feedback loop to continue to identify new opportunities for the program will be critical to streamlining the program over time.