 And welcome. My name is Shannon Kemp and I'm the Executive Editor of DataVercity. We would like to thank you for joining the first in the 2014 installment of the Monthly DataVercity Webinar Series, Real World Data Governance with Bob Siner. Today we'll be discussing a different way of defining data stewards and stewardship. Just a couple of points to get us started. Due to the large number of people that attend these sessions, you will be muted during the webinar. For questions, we will be collecting them by the Q&A in the bottom right-hand corner of your screen, or if you'd like to tweet, we encourage you to share highlights or questions via Twitter using hashtag RWDG, Real World Data Governance. As always, we will send a follow-up email within two business days containing links to the slides, the recording of this session, and additional information requested throughout the webinar. Now let me introduce to you our speaker for today, Bob Siner. Bob is the President and Principal of KIK Consulting and Educational Services and the Publisher of the Data Administration Newsletter, TDAN.com. Bob has been a recipient of the Deema Professional Awards for significant and demonstrable contributions to the data management industry. Bob specializes in non-invasive data governance, data stewardship, and metadata management solutions. And with that, I will give the floor to Bob to introduce today's webinar. Hello, and welcome. Thank you. Thank you very much, Shannon. Thank you, everybody, for taking time out of your busy schedules. And there's a lot of interest out there in data stewards and data stewardship. So I'm looking forward. I haven't been looking forward to this installment of this series. So again, thank you for the real-world data governance webinar series. As Shannon said, this is the first of 2014. And if you keep checking back to dataiversity.net, you can find the subjects for the upcoming, actually for almost for the whole year. Pretty soon we'll be posting all of the webinars for the full year. But certainly a lot of interest in data stewards and data stewardship. So, that hopefully, I'll say some things that will cause some interaction here. I'm curious as to what your thoughts are. There's a lot of organizations, obviously, putting governance programs in place. And typically data stewards and stewardship are a large part of the data governance programs. And there's a lot of different approaches. And the approach that you take in your organization really depends on the way that governance is accepted into the culture of your organization. So I'm going to kind of show a little bit of a contrarian view to a different way, as I say here, of defining data stewards and data stewardship. And I am very interested in your feedback on whether you believe that something like this would work within your organization. Please ask questions, make it as interactive as possible. And like I said, here at least is a list of the next three webinars in this series. So February, we're talking about a governance framework for success. And in fact, part of the presentation today will be used in that presentation as well, where I'm going to be talking about a framework for roles and responsibilities within an organization. And certainly data stewards and the stewardship of the data itself is a large part of a framework for success. These are all data governance webinars. In March, the special guest has now been identified. Scott Ambler is going to join me. And we're going to talk about data governance and agile philosophy. And it's always good for some interesting statements. And hopefully a lot of you will attend that as well. And then in April, we're going to put together a webinar, which is How to Write a Data Steward Job Description. So after I talk today about a different way of defining data stewards, a lot of people are going to have interest in how do we put together a job description of exactly what a data steward does within the organization, how we identify and recognize who those stewards are. So we're going to continue along this popular theme of data stewards and data stewardship in the April webinar. So looking forward to having you there as well. Please take the time. I'm going to love to have you there. So I want to, as I usually do with my webinars, I start by talking about the abstract that I used to hopefully attract you to bring you here to this webinar. So here's the abstract. And most people will agree. Most people, at least in the data management and data governance and data professionals in general, will get stewards basically set at the core of a data governance program. So they're basically the glue that holds the governance program together. The role of steward is to find ways in different organizations. So hopefully with this webinar here, I'm going to share with you other things that will make you think about even other ways of being able to define how stewards and stewardship might work in your organization. So again, organizations run the gamut on how they define the role. What I really wanted to do here was I'll give you another way to look at the role altogether. So one of the things that I have been known to be saying recently is that potentially everybody within the organization has some level of steward responsibility. So therefore, potentially anybody in your organization could be a data steward. So the question I asked here is, what if everybody in your organization was considered to be a steward of the data they define, produce, and use? And that sounds even more overwhelming probably than trying to put data governance together for a limited audience. The fact is that people within your organization almost to a person, as part of their daily job, they define, they produce, and they use data as part of their job. And management in most organizations would agree that we need to hold people accountable for how they define, produce, and use data. And if that's true, then we're really, truly trying to formalize the accountability of these individuals across our organization. Then potentially everybody could be identified as being a steward. Now that doesn't mean that we need to go out and tackle them in the hallway and tell them they're a data steward and change their title and give them additional work to do. One of the things that we do need to do is we need to educate these folks on the fact that they do have an impact on the quality and the usefulness of data throughout the organization. So whether they're defining the data, and there's typically fewer people defining data than who are producing data, and there's typically less people who are producing data than there are that are using the data, at least in some organizations that seems to be the case. But there's almost nothing to a person. People in the organization have some relationship to the data. And one of the things that we need to do as part of governance, or at least as part of non-invasive data governance, is to educate them on the impact that they have on data across the organization. So I'm going to talk a little bit today about how do we define stewards in kind of a different way where we don't need to assign people or give them specific titles that say that they're data stewards but almost anybody in the organization can be considered a data steward. So today's webinar is going to focus on these five things, basically a different way of defining the role of data steward, or perhaps it's similar to the way that you're doing it within your organization. And if that's the case, then please let me know that as well. So we have a lot of different ways of defining the role and that there's different types of stewards in the organization. So obviously, everybody is not a decision-maker associated with the data, but obviously there's a lot of operational stewards and tactical stewards in the organization. We'll talk about a different way of engaging in operationalizing stewards. We're going to talk about ways of effectively communicating with them, the simple messages that you can share with your organization that will get the message across the fact that we really need to formalize accountability and work that way with our governance program rather than hitting everybody over the head with a stick and calling them data stewards and telling them that their responsibility is what's been in the past that's changing. So one of the first things I'd like to start with is my definitions of data governance and data stewardship. There are some organizations that use these terms interchangeably. I don't believe that that's the right thing to do. So the way that I word data governance is obviously worded somewhat wrong, that governance is the execution and enforcement of authority, because ultimately at the end of the day when we're making decisions around data, we want to execute it in an enforced authority. That's not the definition I really want to focus on today. The definition I want to focus on today is the data stewardship definition. Data stewardship to me is the formalization of accountability to the management of data and data-related assets. So if you agree with these definitions, or if you have definitions of your own, again, I'd love to hear those as well. But if you agree with stewardship, potentially it would be the formalization of accountability. That applies that there's already some level of accountability in your organization. I can recall a conference a few years ago I was talking to a woman about her warehousing environment. She said, oh, we have no governance. We have no stewards. I started asking her questions about, well, in your data warehouse, there's people that have responsibility for defining the data that's going into your data warehouse, or defining the data that's going to be in your MDM solution, or your integrated databases, or whatever it is that you're creating. So there are some people there that have some level of accountability for defining data that goes into the data warehouse. There's people that are responsible for producing that data. There's people responsible for how they use that data as well. And then if you think about it even further, go back to all of the operational systems, the data systems in your organization, where you're pulling data from to feed these integrated data sources. There's people that define use and use that data as well. So typically in organizations, there is already some level of accountability. One of the things that we need to do is we need to understand who those people are. And we don't need to, again, go over to each of them and tell them that things are changing because they're now a steward of the data. That's not what I'm telling you at all. Actually, what I'm telling you is that they need to be made aware of the impact that they have on that data across the organization. So one of the things that I would suggest to you to do, or many of the things that I would suggest to you to do, are on this page here. So per data resource in your organization, what are the people that are accountable for it? Who's defining the data? Who defined the data? Who created the data model if there was a data model? Who validated the definitions of the data from the database that we perched from a vendor? And what are the people that are accountable for the data per data resource? What are the organizations that are the subject area experts or the subject matter experts? Find out who those people are. Maybe that doesn't exist across the enterprise, but that's going to be one of the things that we need to know in order to implement a successful governance program in our organization. Here are other questions like, what value does improving enterprise view of data bring? And these are all reasons for putting a governance program in place. So one of the things that I frequently hear is that one of the problems that we have as an organization is that nobody is accountable. And this is typically accountable at some level for the definition or the production or the use, or should I say the definition, the product and use of the data. If people say that there is no level of accountability, then this can't be being made. If you say, well, that's one of the things that we have trouble with is making decisions. Decisions are still being made. It's a matter of who's making those decisions. And if we can identify who the decision makers are around the different types of data, that helps us to identify who the stewards of the data are in the organization. Does your management think that nobody is accountable? Does your management think that somebody is accountable? And in some way, you can be able to communicate with them and say, well, these people truly are the stewards, are the domain stewards, or the subject matter stewards of the data across the organization. So is there an industry standard for what a data steward is? There's probably a lot of industry standards. I mean, it depends on the organization that you go to. You may have a different definition for what a data stewardship is, how data stewardship operates within the organization. And so it's not necessarily a single industry definition for data stewards. Some of the organizations may disagree and say that their definition is the industry standard, but the truth is I've been exposed to a lot of organizations, and there is no one way for organizations to identify stewards throughout. So the question then becomes, should there be an industry standard? I don't believe it's necessary, but at some point there may be an industry standard that is written about or spoken about, but really the definition of the data steward is going to be specific to your organization. So this is perhaps the most important slide of the whole slide deck, and I'm already seeing some of the questions that are coming in regarding that if everybody's a steward, then nobody's a steward, just like if everything's a priority, nothing is a priority. We're going to address that in a couple of minutes as well, but this is a very important slide. So if you subscribe to the idea that a steward is a person that defines, produces, or uses data as part of your job, and therefore they should have some defined level of accountability or responsibility for assuring the quality of what they do with the data, again, whether it's a definition of production or usage of data, that would be what I'm saying here is a different way of viewing a data steward. Perhaps everybody in the organization could be a steward. Do we need to engage them all exactly the same way? No, we don't, but we at least identify that people that are using data recognize that they have some accountability for what they're doing with that data. So who's a data steward? A data steward can be anybody in the organization that defines, produces, or uses data if they're going to be held or more accountable. I don't know whether what your reaction is to kind of this definition to a data steward, but it's probably thinking, well, if we've only got a handful of data stewards and you're saying that everybody in the organization is a steward of the data, then this is going to make my program that much bigger, and that's not necessarily the case. Maybe the communications with those people is to help them to understand what their responsibility is around data. Maybe that's a little bit larger, maybe that's a lot larger, but maybe you're not going to address every single person in your organization at once. But I can say this, that one of the clients that I'm working with recently is building this into the orientation in their organization. So when it comes on board, they understand that they have some level of accountability and that we're going to keep record of what data they define, produce, and use so that we can communicate with them more effectively. So for example, a risk or a compliance rule changes, we don't want to guess who we need to tell that to, or if there's a change to a business rule. We don't want to guess who that gets communicated to. What we want to do is, we want to know specifically who those individuals are. And one of the things that I'm going to share with you in a couple minutes here is a way of being able to collect that information. And that information is basically metadata. You know, when you think about it, it's data about data, but it's really data about the people that are associated with the data in your organization. So you were an attendee of a real-world data governance webinar that I gave last year of Data Stewards, and it was relatively early in the year. One of the things that I talked about is, what I called it at the time, China's rules for becoming a data steward. And I've since kind of renamed it to be one of the invasive rules for becoming a data steward. But the idea was that I would, again, start a little bit of controversy around this different way of viewing a data steward. I didn't start any controversy at all. Everybody that responded to me had said to me that they were completely bought in to the idea that, you know, press everybody in the organization needs to be accountable to some degree or another for what they do with the data that they define, produce, and use. So a data steward can be anybody. Being a data steward describes a relationship, and it's not necessarily a position. I mean, there are organizations that have a title of data steward, but not necessarily all organizations go that route. A data steward is not hired to be a steward, as I said. A steward can be anybody in the organization. So we're not necessarily hiring you in to be a data steward, but we're hiring you in to do a specific job. And along with that job, comes some level of accountability for what you do with the data. I mean, to me, it seems to make common sense. You disagree with me. Please let me know that. I would love to hear that from you as well. But a data steward does not have to have the title of a data steward. It doesn't have to be told how to do their job. You know, that's the thing. A data steward, if a data steward can be anybody, yes, they have to be told how to do their job, but they don't have to be told how they do their data steward job. In public English, and because they don't have to be told how to do their job, I'm not a believer in the fact that public or industry data steward certification is a good thing. I think that we can certify stewards within our organization as to what their full accountability is. But I think that sending somebody out to a class to teach them how to be a data steward is necessary. Now, again, some people may disagree with me and some people may agree with me, but that's just the way that I view things. There's more than one data steward for each type of data in our organization. And when I share with you some of the tools that I use for collecting that information, you'll see exactly what I mean. We need to know the fact that there's 10 different people in 10 different parts of the organization that are defining the same data. Well, when we have some decisions around that data, we should know who they are so that we can get them involved in the conversations. And again, in a couple of minutes, I'm going to share with you a tool that I think may help you to be able to do that. Stewards of training really should focus, again, on formalizing accountability within the organization rather than trying to get it from somebody from the outside. Again, I'm not telling them how to do their job. We're just telling them how they're going to be accountable for what we do with the data that they work with. So, again, there's a webinar that went into each of those items, each of those eight items, I believe, in detail. There's also an article on TDN called Signers Rules for Defining a Data Steward that goes into a little bit more detail about each of those eight points. So, with the non-invasive data governance rules for becoming a data steward, you may not agree with all of them. You may not agree with any of them. In fact, I have been told as somebody has told me, even through the chat here, that this is basically a do-nothing approach. If everybody's a data steward, nobody's a data steward. I'm not doing that at all. I don't think the same thing applies with data governance and data stewardship as those with priorities. If you have, if everybody's a top priority, nothing's a top priority, but if everybody in the organization is a data steward and even though they may not be identified or told that they're a data steward, they do need to know how what they do with the data impacts people across the organization. So basically, it's not a do-nothing approach. In my mind, it's more of a do-everything approach. It's about everything being everyone within the organization. We need to make sure that the program that we define effectively can communicate with people across the organization. It's one of the reasons that I talk about the need for a communications plan when you're developing a data governance program is because there's a lot of communicating that needs to be done. And you need a plan for how you're going to be able to do that. And you need to have a place for people to come to, to look at, to understand why they have been given a certain level of responsibility because of what they do impacts the data. If they take the data and load it on a jump drive and take it on a site and that data becomes stolen, they're accountable for that. You should know that they're not allowed to do that. That's just a simple example of just letting people know what they can and can't do with the data that they work with. So basically, there's three approaches. So, again, typically organizations approach how they identify stewards in different ways. There's the non-Asians of approaches, the one that I've been talking about so far and the one that I'll continue to talk about. Identify people into roles rather than assigning people into roles. I actually did work with one of the armed forces in the U.S. and they said, let's recognize people into roles. So, I like that they weren't recognized as much as I like the word identify people into roles. Let's leverage their existing responsibilities in whatever way we can within the organization. So, if there's three ways to move forward with how we're going to go about defining stewards, I think that the first one is the one that makes the most sense to me and is most practical in a lot of organizations. The second and third approaches to defining stewards are the commanding control approach and the two by four approach. Well, so the commanding control approach is something that I hear from so many organizations about how we're going to change what people do and we're going to assign them into roles. We're going to give them all these new responsibilities and then they wonder why there's a lot of pushback in the organization. Well, the fact is the reason why there's pushback is because everybody's so darn busy to begin with. In most organizations, if you ask anybody if they're not filled with 100% of capacity, first of all, they'll never do that. But the fact is that people are at 125%. 150%. And if you come to them and say you're a data steward and we're going to give you all these additional responsibilities, they're going to push back. If you tell them that we're going to formalize how they get involved in data projects, then that's a little bit different of an approach than kind of that commanding control approach. The other approach is the two by four approach and that's like a two by four of wood where you go and you, somebody told me, you know, I think I need to change this slide because I think that's a two foot by four foot approach rather than a two inch by four inch piece of wood. But the idea still applies. I guess if you're going to hit somebody in the head with a two foot by four foot piece of wood, that's going to hurt as well. But we don't want to go around bashing people over the head and telling them governance is not optional and that you have to make time for this. Rather, what I would like to do is help them say, you know what, you're already doing this to a certain degree and we're going to help you to formalize that. We're going to help you to do it better and you yourself are going to see some return on that rather than saying, no, we're going to change everything that you do and how you do it and here for the future we're going to start calling you a data steward. Well, you don't necessarily need to take that approach within your organization. I don't suggest that you take the second or third approach. So one of the things that we want to do with data stewards is we want to remove all of the obstacles to them accepting their steward responsibilities. If you have the option of saying yes, they're a steward or no, they're not a steward, that's a little bit different than saying, we're recognizing you as a steward because of your relationship to the data because of what you do with the data. So what are typical responses to the roles that are defined in organizations? Well, I'm not going to get through them one by one but people get concerned about all of those things that I have listed in front of you and giving you too much responsibility, stepping on people and those types of things. But one of the things that I would like you to consider in this approach to defining stewards is the thing, this opportunity that we have to remove obstacles to accepting steward responsibilities. And so not giving them something that's going to be new, they're not really in a position where they need to accept it or not accept it but if your management says that if somebody produces data, they need to be held accountable for how they produce the data, that's different. That's an opportunity. That's an opportunity in your organization to take your steward responsibilities and let people know exactly what is expected of them. A very different way of defining stewards. And one of the other questions I have is why is it important for us to define the role of a data steward and what their responsibilities are. And again, typically if you're an organization that I've worked with in the past or hopefully will work on some of the primary things that typically get delivered when a governance program is delivered. It is a best practice critical analysis, how close are we to what we say we want to, how we want to behave when it comes to governance, that operating model roles and responsibilities which includes the information about the steward role responsibilities. You can build an action plan, you can't build a communication plan if you don't very clearly define what the role responsibilities are that go along with your governance program and certainly your stewards. Typically the backbone of the program becomes that definition of roles and responsibilities and it certainly begins at least with the data steward. And I'm going to talk to you now about a couple different types of stewards that exist within organizations. I did want to let you know again that the next webinar in this series on February 20th is all about an operating model of roles and responsibilities where I go into a lot of detail about the roles themselves, about the roles of the stewards, but also the role of the council and the role of IT and the role of the data governance team and the data partners. If you have time attend the session next month it's going to be interesting where I'm going to show you here in the upcoming slide. So typically it becomes very important that we define these roles and this is really the framework that I'm going to talk about in the next presentation and you may have seen it in the past and the webinars that I've talked about. It looks like there's a lot of different levels of things but the truth is if you look on the far outside of the diagram where it says this exists or we need to leverage this no matter on there do you see that any of these things are new to your organization. You may already have a group that you can use as your council. You may already have subject matter experts that you can use as your domain stewards. We're going to talk about defining producing using data as part of their job. So what we're going to focus on today in the balance of power that we have is this part in the block area. We're going to talk about the data domain stewards and the operational data stewards. So let me get to that real quickly. First thing that I want to say is that we need to recognize that there are multiple different types of stewards that are lower part of that pyramid diagram that I just showed and then there's people that have more responsibility rather than just responsible for doing their job they have enterprise responsibility around the data rather than like I said specific just within their business unit. So you have the operational data stewards that work within a business unit have hands on knowledge they define, produce and use data associated or subject matter experts or a lot of different use for them but the people that have the ability to facilitate resolution of issues pertaining to that domain or subject area of data and in some organizations the people at this level the tactical level of that pyramid diagram that I showed you they have decision-making authority sometimes they don't data steward coordinators that aren't really truly data stewards but they're steward coordinators and I'll talk about that later when we dissect that middle part of the framework here that I just showed you a second ago so if you've been an attendee of my webinars in the past this probably looks very familiar to you and I talk about it all the time and it's a very valuable tool to most organizations is the common data matrix where the idea is that we're going to cross-reference in our organization the different parts of the organization with the different data that we have in the organization as you can see here we have customer data the audience data and customer data has sub-domains of data and each of the sub-domains exist in multiple systems and each of the different parts of the organization there's people that define, produce, and use that data and one of the things that I suggest is we need to know who those people are so the common values the top or the left side of this diagram is this part that I highlighted in kind of a greenish color which is if we know who does what with data across the organization or we at least know what parts of the organization are defining and producing and using the different data then it becomes very valuable to us as a tool for communications about that data so not only that the IT area systems subject matter experts for each of those different systems or each of the different data so one of the things that we need to do to get started is to inventory who does what with data across our organization so you've probably seen the common data matrix before I'd love to hear from you if you guys use the common data matrix within your organization the fact is the common data matrix for references with the pyramid tool in that color if you see here where we have the operational stewards at the bottom of the pyramid here's where we have them within the organization here where we have IT whether it be IT within a business unit or there could be IT as a centralized IT and again most of the colors are representative there's a pretty fair crossference from one tool to the other but certainly this middle piece right here that I talked about the tactical level is this over here on the common data matrix that we need to do to identify in our organization or to identify in our organization who has the accountability to be able to make decisions and if we just agree to disagree and go on our merry way every given time then we're we're not going to solve anything so ultimately that middle part of the pyramid diagram becomes the most important part of the data actually as I've stated well many many times to people is that is the hurdle that most organizations need to get over in order to successfully input their data governance program if they identify those domains or whatever they call them at the tactical level that becomes a big step in being successful in an organization so real quickly with the next couple of slides because very quickly time is going to run out here an hour is only so much time to go into all the details that I wanted to share with you if you're interested in pursuing the conversation after the webinar please again reach out to me reach out to Shannon I'd love to talk about that as well but I want to run through some of the responsibilities of those operational data stewards so again these are the people within the organization that basically use data to create or produce data as part of their jobs so they have responsibility for defining data that will be used those are data definers if you're going to break it down to definers producers and users people who produce data are the producers people that use data are the users for the integrity of what they do with the data in the organization so additionally the responsibility of the operational stewards may be to create or review data definitions of some of these things that I say are important for the operational data stewards to do doesn't mean you need to give them a list and say hey now you're responsible for these things these are things that they do as part of their job and if they don't do these things we need to make sure that the operational data stewards are represented in their interests across the organization those last two bullets on this slide are extremely important we do need the operational data stewards these people that data data define producers use data we do need them to communicate newer change business requirements to people that can help to influence change we need to communicate concerns issues and problems with the data we need to know who these people are so we need to record it and again we don't need to necessarily know every single person you need to be a multinational organization with with with anything across the globe and you have to know every single person's name in every part of the organization that defines producers and uses data the answer is no way if I told you that you needed to do that you would have told me that I was crazy but you do need to know that there's people in these organizations that are defining producing or using data so when there's changes or when there's things to get updated we can communicate with those folks effectively so we need to at least define some responsibilities of data stewards so that we'll go out and tell people you know what since you define the data we're going to educate you on what it really takes to define the data or if you're going to produce the data but the same zip code in for every single customer does not necessarily add value in the way that it is supposed to in the organization you know again as an example of what an operational steward may do they're responsible so this is I love this vibe they're responsible for doing what is expected of them in their job while being held formally accountable for how they do it and in fact I thought that was so important that I put it there twice so they are again responsible for doing what is expected of them in their job but they are held formally accountable for how they do it when it comes to data so the question then becomes what does it mean by formally accountable how do people formally accountable for what they do with the data let's talk about that for a second formally accountable there's a bunch of different ways organizations do that they do it through performance evaluation which is really invasive that's a way again to make certain that people are following what they're being told to do with data and responsibilities which is also invasive what I know a lot of organizations do is create sign-offs along the way through projects to make sure that we've engaged the right people at the right time to do the right thing with the data so we want to define the stewards as a way and then we want to define we want to make sure that we can hold them formally accountable again for how they act with the data so one of the things we want to do is we want to put it in the forefront of people's consciousness basically that what they do with the data has an impact on the organization and we want to explain to them what that impact is and how if in fact they're going to be held formally accountable through any of these means what exactly does that mean to them with their job performance our responsibilities of the domain stewards we've got to speed up a little bit here but I wanted to just give you an idea that again they have responsibility for a subject matter of data organization the fact is some of these people probably already exist in the organization we need to identify who they are and write them down they're responsible for escalating issues they're responsible for documenting the rules or making sure that the rules are documented in the organization for the data the steward coordinators again they don't necessarily sit down in a position where they have accountability for well actually if everybody's a data steward program is to coordinate the activities of the stewards again please take some time to read through the definitions of these roles when we share the slides with you it's really not the topic of the presentation here but again talking about the different roles associated with the stewards and the organization we can't forget about the data steward coordinators typically that's a role in an organization that takes place and that we get the stewards the right stewards involved at the right time so a couple of different questions that I've seen from organizations when they've gone out and they've engaged their stewards and actually usually you get a chuckle out of this when I say this to a group of people but I had a very large client say to me how many stewards are we going to need how long are we going to need them for talk about that in a second here because when you get questions like that it's an opportunity to educate people within your organization as to what a steward is and how a steward operates and how we identify who those stewards are so the question really comes again how will we identify the stewards recognize the stewards how will we you know she could fill in the blank basically but we want to treat our stewards well obviously right so we want to identify them we want to recognize them we don't really want to assign them we do activate them and that's what we spend the balance of the time talking about is how do we identify the stewards once we've found them but you get questions like that like how many stewards do we need and how long are we going to need them for the way I answer that question is how long do we need to have quality data for well if we have quality data then we always need to have somebody who's accountable for that data and therefore we can approach governance in a non-invasive way and certainly the way that we identify so now that we've defined what a steward is we need to define what a steward does and I already said basically a steward does what a steward does but when they're participating in the role of being a data steward actively in a project or a program or some initiative within the organization we need to be able to articulate to them what it is that we are expecting from them in that role so we do it proactively and we can do it reactively to what the stewards already do so the way that is there's several ways to do that to build into your project management and capabilities but also to create things like governance activity matrices, racy charts, FLCs and those types of things one of the pet peeves and I talk about it quite often is that I don't like it when people call things data governance processes the fact is what we're really doing is we're applying governance to existing processes or to new processes that are being refined and if you call things data governance processes you can expect that people are going to say well governance is telling me that I need to do x, y and z well that's not really the fact the fact is that the process is and we want to be certain that we get the right person involved at the right time to make the right decision and one of the things we want to do is we want to build governance into what they do rather than trying to tell them that the majority of what they're doing is going to change so right here again I wanted to share real quick with you the concept of non-invasive governance that you do give employees new job titles you recognize the majority of their work isn't going to change you're going to identify, recognize and engage them the idea is that we're not meeting the people and the data so again the idea is non-invasive in your approach so what exactly does a steward do they do what's expected of them in their job while being formally accountable for how they do it and again don't call them data governance processes one of the things I want to do is share with you here well a few minutes left some of these matrices just so you can see how it's worked so here's an example of a governance activity matrix matrix if you define the roles and responsibilities for governance around your organization and you define the steps of a methodology or something that you're following and then you can define out each of these different steps get involved each of these different roles roles get involved in each of the different steps now you're going to visualize the activity of these individuals within the organization I know this is pretty relatively small but it's difficult to it's somewhat difficult to read but the concept isn't necessarily what's inside the blocks the concept is again we're going to define the roles and responsibilities that pyramid that we just talked about and cross reference it with the steps of a process and maybe find specifically what gets done there are several different variations on this that I want to share quickly before we wrap up so here's another example of that this is if you're familiar with RACI Responsible Accountable Consolidated Informed and here's an example from an organization I worked with where they defined the civic procedures and processes that they wanted to apply governance to we're not calling them governance processes but we want to apply governance to each of these things resolve issues identify and monitor risk all of these types of things may be different for your organization but again what we're doing here we're talking about how are we going to engage these data stewards and so the idea is then for each of those different activities we define steps and we define the roles and we say who's accountable who's responsible who's consulted who's informed and we build that into the process and we educate people on what that process is again it's not building something new it's not being very invasive what it is and it may be new to your organization to apply governance to a process but it's a lot less invasive to do it that way than it is to try to redefine the processes that you need in your organization another example here of engaging the data stewards in a process and this one was for restructuring a BI environment and they had here are the different steps they're going to follow here are the different roles associated with governance across the organization and again they just cross this is how they engage the stewards within their organization they define what they were supposed to do how long it would take those times should elapse so again it's a way of going from informal governance informal involvement of people to more formal way through these types of matrices another example this is one for example of a master data certification process here's the steps here are the roles again color coordinated with the pyramid diagram in your organization that may be very helpful for people to be able to match up who knows what and how and when they get involved and who's responsible accountable so again what we do is this is the roles of the organization with the steps of the process and we define who's going to be responsible who's going to be concerned and who's going to be informed all of those types of things obviously in the organization it's going from less formality to more formality and it's going to be a noninvasive way basically so that's proactive you kind of build it into your process well the same thing that kind of holds true for reactive as well where we're all prioritizing issues so we may have a process that we follow to solve problems and your process may look something like this it may look something like something completely different but the fact is that there's a process to solve problems and if you can do the same type of thing is take the steps that you follow to resolve an issue and take the different roles that you've identified for governance across your organization you can formalize how you go about resolving data issues in a much more like I said much more of a formal way that you can demonstrate to people the value that it's adding to your organization so again we were talking about defining stewards in a different way just involving them that they should be now again it may sound like you're doing nothing well the fact is no you're not doing nothing you're doing everything you're getting the right people involved at the right time and one of the things that you need to do in order to do that is to recognize who they are and to make sure that you record them and then actively engage them throughout the different processes that are being governed within your organization so what I'd like to do I'd like to wrap up here and then take some questions see that there are a bunch of questions so I want to leave some time for that but these are some important messages for communicating to your management and a lot of presentations that I've given one of the first questions that I ask the people that are in attendance is how many of your organizations are doing data governance and some people raise their hands some people don't raise their hands some hands go up just a little bit yeah we're kind of doing data governance and then I turn to them and I say you know what I'm going to ask the same question again and I want you all to raise your hands kind of puzzled books and I ask the question again and everybody raises their hand say well the fact is there is already some governance taking place within your organization there are people in your organization that have levels of accountability for how they define producer and use data they're just not necessarily being held formally accountable for how they do it therefore it becomes the wild west therefore we come spreadsheet heaven and access database heaven and share point heaven where people can just enter anything that they want there's no formal way of governing the data in a lot of organizations but we know that we already govern data for specific applications we need to take that and take advantage of that in other parts of the organization as well so you're already governing data we can formalize how we govern data by putting structure around what we're doing we can improve these things we don't have to spend a ton of money in order to put a data governance program in place but what we do need to do is we need to have a plan we need to have a way to go about it we need to have some resources that are actually associated with putting the program together specifically but we don't have to spend a ton of money on governance so if you go into the outside for help I would certainly recommend that but the idea is that it's not as though you can buy a piece of software and put it in place and therefore have a governance program doesn't work like that what we're doing is we're really focusing on changing the behavior of people we're focusing on changing the behavior of the stewards we need structure and that's really what the non-invasive approach is specifically before we take some questions is that data governance doesn't have to be a huge challenge so communicating to your management for whatever part of the organization that you have some influence over that you have been tasked with before you don't want to go to people and tell people how large of a challenge data governance is it's going to be expensive and it's going to be complex if you go to them and say we need to find stewards in such a way that it's going to make sense to people that people aren't threatened by being made stewards within their within their part of the organization so these are just for management again the ones that I had on the previous page and on this page here they're really valuable to your organization if you tell them it's going to be a huge challenge that's what they're going to believe if you go to them and say you know we're already doing this but we can put some formality around it to take with people at that level and if you tell them we don't have to spend a boatload of money on this they're going to like that even better but you're really not governing the data itself you're governing people's behavior that's associated with the data and that's something that that seems to make sense for our organizations so the last thing that I want to share you with here before we take some questions is something that I shared at my last one more thing to share here is that I'm also presenting on this topic at the data governance conference in San Diego in June so I'm pretty sure that I will be speaking of that and actually this presentation it goes into even more depth for each of the roles because an hour's time is relatively quick to kind of go through all this but I shared this kind of a poster with people at the state of governance conference where people came to me and said we're trying to get the right people involved at the right time in the right way using the right data to make the right decision to lead to the right decision at least most of the time within an organization and those matrices that I shared with you the common data matrix the governance activity matrix those will help you to put your arms around who does what with data across your organization and then hopefully help you to move forward with your governance program even better in 2014 than it was in 2013 I'm going to wrap up here real quickly and then turn it back over to Shannon these are the webinars that I have coming up in the next several months talk more in detail about the governance framework that I'd like to share in this webinar in January in March Scott Ambler will be with me to discuss agile data governance and we'll give you good feedback from boys to how they view the comparison or the relationship between agile and data governance in April we're going to talk about a data steward job description I'm always interested in your ideas about the topic so please share them with me or share them with Shannon and share them with Dataversity and with that Shannon I would like to turn it back over to you for questions okay we have a lot of questions coming in and don't be you know I know we only have ten minutes here but don't be shy about submitting your questions one of the great things about this and of course the most popular question is will you be receiving a copy of the slides so I will be sending out a follow-up email by end of day Monday with links to the slides I have this presentation as well as the recording we've also had a request Bob for the data governance matrices so and so we'll get that all out to you again by end of day Monday so let me start with the questions again a lot of great questions but if the idea of data stewardship is still pretty new within the organization even organizations that have taken data governance seriously do you not think in this environment people designated as data stewards are important or most of the things that the people are important anybody who does anything with the data should be important to the organization you talked about designating stewards in that question yeah if it's not a content you need to address it you need to educate people but how you go about educating them will be what determines whether or not your program is going to be successful or not so if you go to them and say hey we're going to assign you we doesn't use a steward and here's all the additional things that you need to do besides for all the work that you already do in the short amount of time that you have to do it they're not very receptive to that or should I say they're just not going to receive that well but if you go to them and say tell me where you're needing help where are the things that we can formalize where can we have an impact what can you do with the data that you would like to do all these questions are really important it makes people feel that they're important and that was the end of the question that you had there was they want to make people these people are all very important so I'm not minimizing the importance of a single steward what I'm actually doing is I'm trying to emphasize the importance of every steward and we need to identify questions or identify communications that we can share with those individuals to let them know they're important and let them know they have an impact the next question is who would be responsible to define legal holds involving SOX FTC regulations around PCI PI USP regulations data retention et cetera et cetera there's a lot of acronyms for like this and for the same thing let me try to address that so you know what there is somebody in your legal department who should be able to answer that question who's responsibility for making certain that those rules are defined and communicated you just made my case for me and you need to communicate all of those things with the PI the PCI all those different things need to be communicated to even just the most random user of that data because you don't expect them to follow the rules if we don't educate them on what those rules are so I would say somebody within the legal area should be able to tell you the accountability for making certain that those rules are documented it becomes the job of the data governance team to actually work with the organization and to educate them on what those rules are and how we're going to monitor whether those rules are being followed or whatever it is that you put in place but certainly involve your legal team and like I said I think you made a case for the fact that you've got all these different compliance rules everybody needs to follow In a large company with an immature data governance program don't you think there is a role for named and trained people to function as ambassadors and educators to reach more people than DG can reach directly until the culture change takes root You know what I think that's a great idea and it's not something that I've thought of before is that yes you need to identify people that can be your ambassadors especially in a large company the idea of putting those people on what governance is all about so that they can share the word is a lot different than trying to every single person in the organization as to what they do so I love that idea I think actually whoever sent that question in contact me I'd love to talk to you about it but it makes a lot of sense to have those ambassadors out to your organization who are educated on the program and can really help to extend the reach of the data governance team great question another question for you is in this internet age a lot of the data produced by external customers who do you think should be responsible for the quality of that data that's a great question so if you don't have the ability to dictate to your partners who what the quality of their data needs to be and you're getting the data in from the outside actually the accountability starts as soon as the data hits the doorstep somebody needs to be then validating the data to make sure that it's what it says it's supposed to be that the values are there all of those types of things but people recognize that if they don't have influence over people outside the company it's very hard to be able to tell them what they need to do and what the data needs to look like some of the larger corporations have that cloud to be able to do that in the way that the data needs to look so it becomes very important that we that we get those folks all involved in understanding the impact that they have again across the organization how do you identify what data needs to be governed is it better to start with a data concept or data item within a subject area don't see how it can be applied as a first step to an entire subject area question the fact is that you can't gather all your data in the same way all at once you've got to do it incrementally what I always put it is that it's it's going to be an evolution it's not going to be a revolution you're going to come into your organization and so how do you pick the best data in a lot of organizations they reach out and they touch the low hanging fruit they go to the data issues that they know are causing problems and they formalize how they solve the problem and then they formalize the solving of the problem and use use that as their way again to to demonstrate in the organization you can't gather the data across the organization you can start with an application of the data which again can be large you can start with a domain of the data you can start with a specific system there's a lot of different ways to start but my suggestion is start small and be incremental try to do it as a revolution try to do it as an evolution and as you're learning again I've shared this before in my webinars where somebody told me at one point don't let perfection get in the way of good enough let's put a program in place and let's start working on specific data issues and let's not be afraid to change the course how governance is working within the organization if in fact it's not working the way that you want it to work that's what I would suggest and if you have low-hanging fruit you can have that first because you can demonstrate your value quickly by solving problems we have time for just one more question but again if you want to submit additional questions we'll be sure to get those written answers to you in the follow-up email so last question Bob with respect to data governance within a federated organization what techniques in the data stewardship areas and application silos to enterprise repositories with defined processes if you didn't try to memorize that question and repeat that back to you that's a long question I know with respect to federated organizations well there are different techniques again you're not going to start out by addressing the entire federation so to speak you're going to start in certain areas and you're going to again select information about who's what with the data and identify who the present decision makers are it will work the same in a federated organization as with a non-federated organization and certainly the idea is to move away from managing the data in the specific application silos you want to move towards enterprise definition of the data well you're not going to get to an enterprise definition of the data without some level of governance or you'd call it something else I mean there's got to be some there's got to be some accountability there's got to be a way of being able to make decisions so I would say that with respect to a federated organization again you've got to do it incrementally and you've got to have a plan and again don't be afraid to change and that's all we have time for I'm afraid but again thank you everybody so much for these fantastic questions I just it's my favorite part of any session and I just love what everyone gets and Bob thank you so much for this fantastic presentation it's really been a great change to the way we're thinking about data stewardship so that's always a good thing to help the industry move forward and challenge our thinking and thanks everyone I hope everyone has a fantastic day and I'll get the follow-up email out to you with links to the slides the recording the answers to the question and the and then I'll help everyone have a great day very much and thank you everybody we hope to see you again sometime thanks Bob bye bye