What should you include in a Data Governance initiative?

One of the many challenges you will have to face when implementing Data Governance is agreeing the scope of the initial phase of your initiative. By this I don’t just mean which data domains or business functions are going to be in scope. I’m thinking of associated activities like data retention, end-user computing, and data protection. Being a bit of a Data Governance purist I maintain that such activities are most definitely NOT data governance. It is easy therefore to make the logical conclusion that they should not be in the scope of your initiative. So what I say next may surprise you:

Do not immediately go on the defensive and refuse to take any (or even all) of these activities into the scope of your initiative!

Now you may be wondering why someone who spends her time educating people on what Data Governance is would say that! Well, when I’m training and coaching people it is important that they understand what Data Governance is, but when I’m implementing Data Governance in practice, I take a pragmatic approach.

However, I would not want you to think that I would just say yes to an ever-expanding scope. There are a number of factors that would make me consider bringing these additional data activities into the scope of my data governance work, which include:

Whilst you may become aware of other activities that you want to bring into scope, they are most likely to come to your attention through your senior stakeholders – so let’s consider this question:

Now whilst it may be tempting to protect the scope of your initiative, remember they have their own agenda. They are not trying to derail your plans, they just have concerns of their own or issues that they need addressed. The first thing you are going to need to do is to listen and understand what their concerns are before you try to educate or influence them.