 Hello, and welcome. My name is Shannon Kemp, and I'm the Chief Digital Manager of DataVersity. We'd like to thank you for joining the current installment of the Monthly DataVersity Webinar Series, Real World Data Governance, with Bob Siner. Today, Bob will be discussing how can everybody be a data steward. 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. If you'd like to chat with us or with each other, we certainly encourage you to do so. Just click the chat icon in the bottom middle of your screen for that feature. 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. And if you'd like to engage more with Bob and continue the conversations after the webinar, you can go to dataversitycommunity.dativersity.net. As always, we will send a follow-up email within two business days containing links to the slides, the recording of the session, and additional information requested throughout the webinar. Now let me introduce to you our speaker for the series, 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 Damo Professional Award 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 get today's webinar started. Hello and welcome. Hi, Shannon. Hi, everybody. The keyword there is everybody, because that's what we're going to be talking about today. We're going to be talking about everybody being a data steward. It's kind of hard to say you're not a data steward. And if you don't agree with me, please visit the community at dataversity.net so we can talk more about it after the session. But my thought is that everybody in the organization potentially is a data steward. And I hope that you'll at least consider the same as the as we go on with the session today. But thank you again for attending and taking time out of your busy schedule. Before I get started, I'd like to run through a couple quick notes. As you know, the real world data governance webinar series takes place on the third Thursday of every month. And it is renewed for 2020. So I look forward to seeing you throughout the year next year. I talk a lot about non-invasive data governance, and there's some information about the book on non-invasive data governance. I'll be speaking at three dataversity events coming up really soon. In fact, one will be taking place in a couple weeks from now. Data Governance Vision in Washington, D.C. is December 9th through 12th. I'll be involved in the online conference in January and also speaking at Enterprise Data World. There's a couple of online classes and online learning plans that you can get through the Dataversity Training Center. One specifically on non-invasive data governance. The other on non-invasive metadata governance, and as Shannon mentioned, the Data Administration Newsletter, it's out there. There's lots of great articles. In fact, there's one recently that I published that's titled What Makes a Data Steward? So if you're looking to learn more about what makes a data steward, please visit the publication. And of course, KIK Consulting is my consulting business, and it is the home of non-invasive data governance. Today, we're going to talk about several things in regards to everybody being a data steward. First of all, we're going to talk about different types of stewards that you can identify and recognize throughout your organization. We'll talk about how to get these people that we recognize as data stewards engaged in activities that have to do with the Data Governance Program. It's one thing to recognize and identify who your stewards aren't another thing to get them actively engaged in program activities. Then we'll talk about using data stewards as an integral part of what I call Data Governance Working Teams. Great name for groups that get together to solve data problems. And then we'll talk about stewards in large and distributed organizations and how we can communicate with everybody since everybody is a data steward. So those are the things we're going to talk about today. But what I wanted to get started with was a couple memorable lines. People say or that I say and that have to do with data stewards. The first one is the one that I use all the time and I say that everybody is a data steward and that people should get over it. And we need to set up our program so that it can take advantage of the fact that there are people already stewarding data in the organization and that people need to recognize themselves as such. I also heard from somebody who told me that if everybody is a data steward nobody is data steward and I don't agree with that. In fact, I don't think that there's any logic behind that because everybody who has a relationship to data if they're held formally accountable for that relationship then they're a data steward. You can't really opt in or opt out. You know it's that everybody if you define data you have responsibility for that. If you produce data responsibility for producing data and the same thing for using data. So another line somebody told me was how much data would a data steward steward if a data steward could steward data? And how many stewards are we going to need and how long are we going to need them for? The fact is stewards already exist in your organization. We need to know who they are. We need to record who they are. We need to help them to understand that they're stewards and give them things that they can do and give them tools that will help them to become better data stewards in the organization. I typically start my webinars with a series of definitions. I don't want to do too many definitions in this webinar because I've got lots of material for you. But I think it's really pertinent today when we start defining what the data steward is and what data stewardship is. So let's start with the definition of data governance. And I word the definition strongly. I say that data governance is the execution and enforcement of authority over the management of data. Because at the end of the day we need to be able to make decisions. And that sounds like it's worded a little bit strong. But the fact is that we need to word it strong. We want people to sit forward and pay attention to what we're doing with data governance. And if we can't execute and enforce authority at the end of the day, we're not really getting too far with implementing governance within our program. The definition of data stewardship is similar to the definition of data governance. But really data stewardship is the formalization of accountability. And when we talk about formalization of accountability, then that kind of implies the fact that there may be some accountability that's there already. And hopefully by the end of this webinar you'll understand that people just by doing what they do in their daily jobs have some level of accountability for the data that they're working with. But if that's my definition of what data stewardship is, my definition of what a data steward is, is it's a person that defines, produces and or uses data as part of their job if they're being held formally accountable for that relationship to the data. So think about everybody in your organization, people who are just using data or people that are defining what the data is going to look like. If you can hold them formally accountable for that relationship, then chances are that they're a data steward. But they might need to be told they're a data steward and told what that means and how they get involved. So at least if we start with these definitions of the execution and enforcement of authority, that's the goal. How are we going to do it? We're going to do it through data stewardship and we're going to recognize who in the organization is accountable for the data and help them to be held formally accountable for that data. I talk about non-invasive data governance real quickly. I'll just go through this definition real fast. It's really trying to do those things that I just said. We want to apply that a formal accountability through roles and responsibilities that I'll share with you during the session today and we're going to apply governance to process. So the actually the term non-invasive data governance really describes how we're applying governance to the organization. And I've given webinars on different approaches to data governance. I just think that non-invasive seems to be the least threatening and the most accepted within organizations. If we can go to people and say you're already doing this, you want to help you do it in a more productive way, then it's very difficult for them to fight back. So we'll talk more about that as we go through. But first thing I really wanted to talk about today was how to recognize different types of stewards based on what people do within the organization. So when the question is asked who is a data steward, well basically a data steward can be anybody in the organization and that's a person that's technical or in the business side if they define produce and use data as part of their job if they're being held formally accountable. So what does it mean to be held formally accountable? Well that's really the basis of what I mean about the non-invasive approach to data governance. And we can hold people formally accountable by writing it into their job descriptions, by doing performance evaluations based on how well they are defining producing and using data. It also helps to give these people the time and the tools to perform the function of data steward and we'll talk about what that function is as we go through the webinar today. But we also want to give them the knowledge that they need to perform their function of being a data steward. So the other thing that or one of the things that I always talk about is you don't have to call data stewards you don't have to change their title you don't have to make them feel like you're giving them more work to do you're just trying to help them to understand that what they do with the data is important and if we can formalize what they do and we can formalize and we can repeat process so that we can consistently improve the quality and the value of the data I think that's what most data governance practitioners are trying to do with data governance and it all starts with the stewards. So the first thing we're going to need to do is identify who those people are in the organization that define produce and use data and we're going to need to record it somewhere and then we're going to need to work with them and help them to recognize that they truly are data stewards. I typically break the types of data stewards into three categories actually there might be a fourth when you start talking about more of the data owners in the organization but I always use the three actions of defining producing and using data as being critical in how we describe people's relationships to the data and the people I've asked people I've challenged people to tell me well what can people do more than define produce and use data and they typically we come to an agreement that whatever people suggest it falls under defining producing and using so one of the things that we might want to do to get started with data stewardship in thinking that potentially everybody in the organization could be a data steward is to recognize who those people are that are defining data. Do we know who those people are? Have we recorded who they are? Do they know what they need to do to define data? Do they understand the value that the metadata that the data documentation that's being provided in the business glossary or in the data dictionary or in any data catalog or any other tool that you're using? Do they understand the value of that? Do they understand that it's going to be important for them to make certain that the data is well documented in order for people to understand that data in order for people to protect that data? So we want to be able to recognize who the people are in the organization that are defining the data and we want to record it somewhere so that we can come back to those folks and provide standards for how the data is going to be defined or if somebody is going to be defining data and we can help them to understand that that data already exists somewhere else we might not need to have five different versions of the truth for the same data. It's hard to have five versions of the truth. You know the fact is that there's really typically one version of the truth and the others are are synonyms for that or different versions of the same type of data but we need to recognize who's defining the data in the organization and help them to define the data in such a way that that data will be more valuable to the organization. Then there's the data producers. These are often people at the front lines of the organization which are entering data into systems or bringing data in from other sources. You know do we know who those people are that are bringing data into the organization or creating the data? Do we record their names somewhere? Do we know what people are producing the data and how they're going about producing the data? I'm just saying when we get to the operational nature of the data stewards we need to know who the definers are and the producers are and most of all and in most organizations a lot of the focus is on who's using the data. That's almost the no-brainer when it comes to recognizing different types of stewards within the organization. So let's take for example personally identifiable information or some other level of sensitive information that we really restrict how that information and how that data can be shared. If you use sensitive data then you need to protect the sensitive data. You can't really opt in or opt out for that and say well these city people on the right side of the room they're going to protect the sensitive data but these people on the left side not so much. That's not going to fly especially if somebody is going to come into your organization and audit you for what you're for what you're doing with the data and how you're protecting the data. People that use the data need to understand the rules associated with how that data can be used. They also need to understand the data. They need the glossary, the dictionary, the catalog, those types of tools that we can provide to them. Do we know who's using the data? I share a tool often called a common data matrix. I'm going to share a version of that in a couple of minutes but we need to record who the people are that are using the different types of the data. Let's say for example a business rule changes and you take a best guess at all the people that use that data. That's not as good. That's not as comfortable for the data governance administrators to just guess who the people are in the organization that use that data. We need to have a record of them. We need to have a way of being able to keep that information up to date and we need to make certain that we can help these people to be held formally accountable for how they're using the data. Oftentimes when people talk about data stewards they're thinking about data users the most. Now these are the people that have to follow the rules based on how the data is defined and how the data is being produced. We need to know who the definer's producers and users of the data are and if we think of those people defining producing and using the data as being data stewards then probably the more you think about it basically everybody in the organization is doing at least one of those three things. If you think that everybody is either defining or producing and or using data the fact is everybody in the organization can be a data steward. We need to make certain that we set up our program to cover that level of complexity or that level quantity of people in the organization that are defining producing and using the data and that means we as data governance administrators have the responsibility of communicating with these people. I'm sharing with you now a version of the common data matrix and I don't expect you to be able to read this I'm going to blow it up for you in a minute and make it a little bit larger so that you can read what's on the screen but we can create tools ourselves that will help us to record the data where the data is located who has responsibility for that data and what parts of the organization they're in. So this is kind of an expanded version of a common data matrix let me make it a little bit more readable for you and this example came from a university that I'm working with. They're focusing on space data they're focusing on building and site and room and floor data just a small set of data in the entire university but they're focusing on that initially so they decided they wanted to recognize who in the organization defines produces and uses that data and so they set up a tool like this like the common data matrix to say okay we're starting with space data on the left and as part of that space data we got site data we got building data and if you can scroll down you can see there's other pieces of data room and floor data that's really important and each of those site building room floor are broken down into attributes or individual data elements and in some organizations it really becomes important to start with critical data elements we're not going to govern all data the same way so if we work our way across the common data matrix we can see we've got a domain of data space data we've set it down to a subdomain to site data even a further subdomain or even the critical data elements are identified and as we work our way from left to right we can see that that data resides in multiple systems and in IT there's different people that have responsibility for that data in the system so having that information is critical to being able to recognize who the stewards are for data across the organization so another kind of if we pull back from this diagram a little bit we can see where the data elements fit in what system and what parts of the organization are using that that's where I marked an x in the block so you see within different parts of the organization they're using that specific data from that system you know what if they're using that data they need to understand the rules associated with using that data so therefore they become a data steward if they're defining that data then they become a data steward we just need to set up our program in such a way that we can communicate effectively with all of the definers and all of the producers and all of the users that's truly the only way for us to have entire coverage of the organization so beyond and those three roles that I just described the definer the producer and the user those are at the operational level then there's also the tactical level stewards I know somebody will probably ask what do we do about the subject matter experts or the data owners and there's a responsibility for them as well if you've been attending this webinar series for a while you've probably seen this diagram many times or if you've attended any of my sessions with the data diversity you've seen this a lot but those two areas of these this operating model of roles and responsibility are the data stewards we've got stewards at the tactical level they're domain stewards they have knowledge and authority and potentially decision making power over certain subject areas of data that's at the tactical level at the operational level that's where we find the data definers the data producers and the data users so there are multiple types of stewards and the fact is we don't need to go and label these people as data stewards they have day jobs they don't need to be called a data steward they might be recognized or they might be told that they're stewards of the data but we don't have to change their title we don't go out and hire stewards in because basically we hire people into the organization and they instantly become a steward based on the data that they define produce and use as part of their job so at the tactical level that's the middle level of the pyramid diagram I just shared with you we've got to come up with names for these people most often the names the clean names that are given to them are the data owners these are the people that we go to that have the knowledge have the responsibility for the data I've seen them call data custodians I've called them data domain stewards for many years and I had a client recently say well those folks they're really the subject matter experts for the data and so they said well I agreed with them and they said well that's what we're going to call them you know it eliminates any question as to what they are they're the data subject matter experts so at the tactical level at that middle level of the roles and responsibilities pyramid that I just showed you we could have these people and we should define what these people do and what are they responsible for well they're responsible for that subject matter of data or the category of the information or even specifically maybe some set of data within an application or within a system so we need to know who the data owners are in fact I've had many organizations that I've worked with that that's where they started they said one of the first things that we need to do is to recognize who in the organization owns the data that might be your organization now if that is the case then if we would go back to the common data matrix that spreadsheet that I just shared with you we would want to identify their names associated with the domains or the subdomains of data that are important to the organization and these people are critical these people are going to be engaged as you see later in the session we'll talk about when they get involved in working teams but we're also going to engage the operational data stewards as well and speaking of the operational data stewards again what are we going to call these people we can call them operational data stewards we can call them definers producers or users you know chances are that many people are going to do multiple of those things they're not going to just define they're not going to just produce or just use the data as part of their job they may be defining some data and producing and using other data or you know what I mean everybody uses data or does something with data as part of their job and so if we can recognize and know what data they define produce and use and help them to understand that their data stewards they are data stewards then we want to help them to understand what they're responsible for and so they're responsible for those actions they take with data if they're using data that is sensitive then they can't share it unless it's with somebody that they know who's going to know the rules or that is appropriate for that data to be shared with you know the same thing can hold true for health information or intellectual property these people who are defining producing and using data as part of their day job need to understand that the actions they take with the data need to be following some type of normal or some type of standard for the organization so they are responsible for the actions that they take with the data if they're going to be held formally accountable for their actions and I think that might be the key takeaway from this session is that we need to find a way to help to hold these people formally accountable we can't expect them to be formally accountable if we don't communicate with them effectively as to what that means and let them know what they are being held formally accountable for and so they need to know that they're being held formally accountable and they need to have tools that will help them to be that way to be formally accountable and so I've shared in other webinars and I thought it was relevant to the share in this webinar as well something that I call signers eight rules for becoming a data steward and the first rule is that a data steward can be anybody in the organization and in fact data steward is not really even a title data steward describes a relationship to the data it's not a position you're not going to call everybody in the organization a data steward you're going to call them by business analyst or x y and z engineer or whatever their job is but they have a relationship to the data and therefore they become a data steward we're not going to hire somebody in to be a data steward and I've seen people recently post things you know things that we're going to be looking to hire data stewards well you're going to hire people that are the best people to fill the jobs that you're trying to fill and then just by the nature of their job they are going to be defining producing and or using data as part of their job we need to help them to understand what it means to do that to define produce and use the data I say that a data steward doesn't need the title of data steward again we're not going to call everybody in the organization a data steward that would be silly you know give them the titles that they have but help them to recognize that through their relationship to the data they are a data steward a couple more rules several more rules about becoming a data steward a data steward doesn't really have to be told how to do their job unless it comes to how they need to handle data how they need to complete documentation for the data they don't really need to be told how to do their their job and people that want to certify data stewards I have to question what that means are we really certifying people as data stewards because data stewards going to be different depending on what type of data they use and what their role with that data is you know I've seen organizations that have said well Mike over here he's the data steward for customer data Mary she's the product data steward the fact is that if everybody is a data steward there's going to be a lot more than one data steward that exists for each type of data everybody that uses data that needs to be protected is going to be a steward of that data and when we're going to train these people we're going to need to focus on helping them to become formally accountable for how they're using the data if that's what their relationship is so these are eight simple rules but I know that they they make people cringe a little bit and think that well you know everybody can't be a data steward but no they can be and they do need to be if you're being selective and who the people are that are data stewards you are not covering the entire organization. It's topics like these that are excellent for conversation within the community after the webinar and moving forward by the way I really am interested in what people have to say does this really make sense so I say everybody is a data steward and we need to get over the fact that everybody that is you know that everybody that has a relationship to the data is recognized and recorded somewhere that's what that relationship is becomes complete and absolute in your organization it becomes it covers the entire organization so one of the first things that we need to do is inventory and record how people are related to the data just as kind of the first step as to what we need to do to recognize who these data stewards are okay so I've beat up the the topic a little bit of recognizing different types of stewards let's talk about ways to engage stewards in the activities associated with your program and there's opportunity that they can provide opportunities to data governance they can submit data quality issues they can participate on the governance teams that I'm going to talk more about here in a minute they certainly need to be made aware and need to be educated and trained on what it means to have this type of relationship to the data and then we can look at ways to govern projects and different initiatives taking place in the organization so let's go through each of these real quickly the opportunity submission had an organization recently that wanted to call it incident a submission you know instead of calling it an incident or something that is negative or a data quality issue we might talk about being a opportunity maybe we have an opportunity to improve the use of a certain type of data but it's not a data quality issue it may be a lack of understanding of the data so instead of calling everything data issues we might want to refer to them as opportunities for data governance and so what we need to do is develop a process so that people in the organization can submit these opportunities and we have we have somebody who's taking in that opportunity and validating it and making certain that it's something that's meaningful enough to the organization that we would challenge people and get people engaged in solving these things when we do this we have to engage the council or typically that strategic level the next level up in the pyramid diagram that i shared we didn't talk about them but the the data governance council or something at that strategic level who are looking to prioritize the appropriate opportunities to be addressed by the organization you know certainly somebody needs to administer the opportunity process and measure what's going on through the process but there's also data quality issue submission we need to create a process for that where people can submit data quality issues and again the same thing holds true for those we need to be able to go through those and recognize who needs to get involved and start to administer a process of taking in data quality issues and selecting which are the most appropriate to be addressed we're going to engage our data stewards in these processes and having a record of who these people are really helps us to narrow down the amount of time that it takes to create these groups of people that are working to solve solve data problems and address data opportunities so the working teams that i spoke about they're a result of these opportunities and these data quality issues and we get them engaged as we right recognize who the appropriate people are to get involved in the processes so typically the working teams are administered by somebody in your central data governance group whether it's a data governance office or it's a data governance administrator some organizations have one person if they're lucky to have that and some have more people that make up a data governance office but the fact is these processes are not going to govern themselves somebody has to have responsibility for that so therefore we need to have somebody administering these teams or bringing these teams together and the end result typically would be to create a repeatable process that we can not only use for a certain set of data or a certain opportunity but we can reuse it for additional opportunities until we build kind of a library of the repeatable processes which is what a lot of organizations are looking to do when they use the term operationalize data governance certainly another way to get the data stewards engaged in program activities is get them involved in the education and training you know certainly in some organizations if they're being told that they need everybody in the organization to be well versed in protecting sensitive information as an example they're going to need to go through awareness and awareness and training on how the data is classified and how that data can be used so we can provide information to them in multiple ways through online awareness through role-based education through working with specific groups and teams throughout the organization to first of all understand what data it is that they use and how they use it so that can be told how to handle that data based on how that data is classified we can build governance into project management a lot of organizations engage their PMOs in the projects to make certain that we are engaging the appropriate data stewards of the appropriate time and again going back to the common data matrix it makes a lot of sense for us to be able to understand who does what with data and if we're just taking a random guess at that it's not going to be good as good as having that information recorded somewhere so there's a lot of different projects taking place within your organization they're not typically called data governance projects they may be called transformations or application developments or system design or system integration just look for ways that data is being manipulated and ask if the appropriate people are being involved at the appropriate time we need to know who the people are that are the data stewards for at least the most important data across the organization I haven't seen too many organizations take a common data matrix and try to complete it for the entire organization and all the data typically they're focusing on that data that is most critical first and you can start from the bottom up you can work with critical data elements and work your way backwards into the domains and subject matters and address the organization incrementally again the common data matrix is not a tool to just be filled out as a one-time exercise and the other thing to think about with a common data matrix is that that information needs to be kept up to date so let's talk about building these working teams and and who make up the working teams and the truth is that oftentimes the working teams are going to be focused on a specific problem so you're going to need to know who the people are in the organization that are stakeholders in the data that is associated with that opportunity or with that issue so again having the common data matrix and having that information recorded is going to be very important and we're going to need to have somebody kind of build this team and facilitate the team and communicate with the team which is typically the responsibility of a data governance administrator or somebody in a role that's similar to that and ideally when you engage these working teams if it is a second time down a specific path for let's say for improving data quality or for protecting sensitive information then you might already have a process that you've done once that you've worked through once or twice or three times and you've updated it to make certain that it really works well for your organization again you're building that repository now of reusable repeatable processes I have a client that is right now talking about data governance as a product or data governance as a service what are the services that they provide it's that repository of repeatable processes you've got an opportunity we've got a way to address the opportunity we've got a way to create the team you know we've got a way to follow a process for doing whatever it is the purpose of that data governance initiative within your organization and typically the working teams can talk about it a little bit before of the tactical and operational levels so when we think about it we've got the the operating model of roles and responsibilities and I've highlighted the stewards as part of this diagram but if we take it one step further we can see that those stewards and though the the domain stewards and the operational stewards are oftentimes engaged in the data governance working teams so if everybody is a data steward and we know what data they're defining and producing and using and we can be very selective in getting the most appropriate people involved in these working team efforts you know we're taking advantage of the fact that we know who all the stewards are so if we extend again across from just the tactical level into these split between the tactical and the and the operational piece the working teams those become the way that we identify and we recognize who the appropriate people are to engage at the appropriate time so I oftentimes talk about something that I call the data governance bill of rights it's not rights in the traditional sense it's actually getting the right people involved at the right time using the right data and so on and so forth I call it the bill of rights I typically take the word rights and put it within quotes because we're really talking about the right people at the right time and we need to know who the stakeholders are in the data that is being focused on by this working team so we're going to look for people that define and produce and use that data we're going to look at the different business areas that are being impacted and the white need of voice in this conversation you know we're going to recognize again we're going to go back to the common data matrix and start recording who does what you know the idea is for data governance in general is to do the right thing at the right time and get the right people involved and communicate with the right people so I really like the idea of the bill of rights because that's really what governance is all about and then when we talk about this working team there's the role of the administrator who is going to be the person that is going to make sure that this stays on course we're going to need somebody to do that we're going to need somebody to define the process to help to define and coordinate and communicate with the team we're going to need to engage they're going to need to engage people at the strategic level at the data governance council or advisory group or whatever you call that strategic level somebody needs to be the point person to communicate the results of the working team somebody also needs to be responsible for measuring and delivering the results and selling selling selling all the time to the government the virtues of data governance and the things that are being done as I said before the data governance initiatives the working team will not work on its own it requires that there is somebody in the organization that has the responsibility for guiding the team through the process and in fact that's one of the first and earliest things that I suggest to most organizations if you don't know who's going to be guiding and administering the program you're really going to have a problem getting off the snide and moving your program forward you know follow repeat processes use things like racy forms to document the steps of the process associated with the different roles that you've defined in your operating model and then you start to build a repeatable library of these different types of processes that are being governed within your organization and here's an example of a racy and oftentimes with the diagrams that I shared it's color coordination between the this diagram in the operating model and the common data matrix if you can see yourself within one of these tools you can see yourself in all the tools the yellow area if you don't recall was the central area of the operating model that was the tactical level that was the subject matter experts and the owners you know we need to be able to help these people to understand when they're going to get involved how they're going to get involved we need to document the process then use the process through a pilot or through a first couple initiatives and make certain that as we are using it we're not afraid to change it and make certain that it is doing what is best for the organization again once you define the roles and responsibilities the first time you don't know that they're right right they're proper they're going to work until you start to engage these people so don't be afraid to change your operating model roles and responsibilities to change the steps of your process it doesn't have to be the first way you define it the idea is that data governance is really an evolution it's not a revolution and so everything is not brand new we need to start with what already exists just like i said let's recognize who these stewards are they may not consider themselves stewards but we need to help them to recognize that they are data stewards so follow repeatable processes and here's some examples of repeatable processes that some organizations that i've worked with have decided to document through a racy and to engage and to become part of that reusable repeatable repository of products and services that they can provide to the organization you know one of the processes is requesting access to data another process protecting sensitive data or resolving data issues or resolving discrepancies in the data you know all of these things are potential examples of ways that you can engage steward through activities through parts of these working teams a more general list looks like this anything that has to do with data definition and any process of data modeling for example or creating a data dictionary or a business glossary anything that has to do with data definition there may be a process associated with it let's make certain that we engage the appropriate people at the appropriate time and the same thing with production and usage and handling and sharing and i have a client now it's focusing on data certification how when we're entering data into the data lake is the data going to be certified so that people number one have the documentation for the data that they need have the understanding that the data exists they have the confidence that the data in this resource is valuable to them so there's those two sets of processes the ones that i shared with you from organizations but we can generalize it more and we can say you know what any depth any process that has to do with data definition production or usage is a potential outcome for repeatable data governance and who are we going to engage we're going to engage the appropriate data stewards that we need to have record of and we need to record somewhere if it's not in the common data matrix then perhaps it's in the tool or whatever you're using to engage and to move forward with your data governance program and as i said before we don't have to think that the things that we define initially are etched in stone if we're finding that the roles and responsibilities we've defined aren't perfect and they're typically not perfect they need to be they need to be adjusted to follow what works well for your organization i mean that's true with anybody that you work with or any books that you read they can define what the roles are but if they don't make sense for your organization they really can't use them so you're going to define the roles out of the gate and then you're going to find out if they work or they don't work for you and you're going to make the appropriate adjustments you're going to adjust how you engage the stewards and adjust the steps of the process adjust your training just make certain that this is an this is an evolution we're learning as we go so we're leveraging the lessons that are learned to help people to become more effective data stewards and by Joe everybody in the organization is a data steward at least if you follow the idea that if they define produce and use data and they're being held formally accountable for that then they're a data steward so let's talk about the data stewards in a large organization if everybody is a data steward that could be a lot of data stewards well you're right they can be but if you want to cover everybody in the organization then you need to make certain that you know who's defining producing and using the data so a lot of it will have to do with the approach that you're taking to implement data governance I talk about the non-invasive approach but there's command and control and the traditional approach of if you build it they will come you know but then there's the non-invasive approach which says you know what you're already a steward we're going to help you to do it better then we think about the construct that's being used to structure what your governance program looks like are you taking a centralized approach a distributed approach a federated approach and also the levels of management that need to be engaged and then we've got to think about where are these people located if you're a global organization you're going to have stewards everywhere literally everywhere and so how are we going to work to engage stewards all over the world if that's what our organization looks like so let's talk about that a little bit so the different approaches that organizations can take the governance have a lot to do with how we associate people with being data stewards in the command and control approach it's typically a directive that says you will do this and we're going to assign people to be data stewards and typically that only covers a limited part of the organization but the first thing that people feel when they're assigned anything is that this is over and above what they're presently doing I like to be less invasive than that I like to say you know what you're already doing this we can help you we're not going to assign you anything you're already doing it we're going to help you to do it better the traditional approach is the approach that I like into the movie the field of dreams if you're familiar with that where the tagline was if you build it they will come well the idea is you should do data governance that's what we're thinking about when we're looking at the traditional approach and in that approach we're identifying people as data stewards I suggest a non-invasive approach which is you're already doing this we're just going to help you to do it better we're going to recognize you which has a positive connotation at the end of the day now instead of assigning instead of identifying we're going to recognize people and it's going to have again that positive effect that you know we're recognizing that you do something we're going to help you to do it more efficiently more effectively basically more formally within the organization that's what data stewardship is all about and if we're going to look to massive numbers of data stewards we need to have an approach to address that number of stewards across the organization it may be kind of overwhelming to you to think that everybody in your organization is a data steward but again based on some of the things that I've said in this session if they're not then we're only really governing parts of the data in parts of the organization if we want data governance to be an institutional discipline then we need to be able to recognize who does what with data and record that information somewhere and I mentioned there's several different ways constructs that organizations can take to put governance into place there's kind of the central one office managing data governance versus a distributed which is there's several parts of the organization that have governance but they're all doing their own thing some organizations that have followed that more distributed approach are looking at taking more of a federated approach these days which means that there's a central office kind of guiding the different distributed offices through data governance and they set up minimal standards that need to be followed in that distributed nature so again how we're going to engage stewards might depend on this part of the approach that we're taking you know whether we're taking a centralized everybody's following one set of rules or distributed which we're letting people do kind of their own thing or that federated where they're doing their own thing but at least they're following a minimal set of standards within our organization we need to think about the different levels of management within the organization and whether or not there's there's a call for data governance coming from really the top part of the organization is there a global influence to our program do we have our executive and our strategic level engaged I often talk about the very first best practice being that our senior leadership must support sponsor and understand what we're doing in data governance or we're going to be at risk right away we need to make certain that we are communicating effectively with the executives and the strategic level and part of that communications may be everybody is a data steward we need to address that had a conversation like that recently with a client where they agreed immediately and said you know what their focus was on again protecting sensitive information and they said everybody has to be involved so everybody basically is a data steward no we did not change their titles to data steward but we had the executive buy-in the executive directive that this needed to be done within the organization I want to think about the management within the different divisions of the organization and the number of levels some organizations have looked at the operating model that I shared and tried to cut out different levels I typically talk about the executive strategic tactical and operational as the four different levels of the pyramid if you can do away with one and still have it make sense with your organization by all means do it what I'm sharing with you is really just a structure or a framework for you to be able to use to define what roles are going to be necessary within your organization and really the last thing that we're really thinking about when it comes to the steward and the large distributed organization is you know are they global are they national regional cultural cultural difference regulatory differences all of these things matter when it comes to the physical location of the stewards and how governance is being administered through the organization so when we start thinking about the fact that have potentially everybody can be a data steward we need to take these things into consideration where are they what are the rules what are the cultures what's the best way to communicate to them what resources do they have it's something that needs to be looked at at a more holistic level for the organization and not specifically just your us or your europe or your britain operations it needs to be something that addresses everybody in the organization because again potentially everybody is a data steward so let's talk last thing we're going to talk about today is how to communicate with these large numbers of stewards and so we need to first recognize who needs to be communicated with and if you kind of refer back to the last slide but you know where are these people located how's the best way to communicate to them they all that all needs to be considered we're going to look to use push and pull technology i'll talk more about that in a second here and then really setting up a communication plan communications won't take place by itself if you don't have somebody administering your program who has responsibility for communications and potentially have somebody from your communication team working with you then you're not going to do a good job of communication you really need to stand out who you're communicating to based on people's relationships with data and you need to understand what are you communicating to them and how are you communicating it to them all as part of that communication plan so when we talk about push and pull communications we can provide a home page for data governance that could be translated into multiple languages if need be but we can have a home page a place for people to go to learn more about the governance program use things like newsletters and organizational bulletins provide things like impact analysis communications bulletin boards have a client now that's putting monitors up in their hallways just as a constant reminder to people to they recognize that the way that they're handling the data is being scrutinized now we need we as data governance practitioners need to make a point of communications and we need to consider that if everybody in the organization is potentially a data steward that our job of doing the communications is going to be even greater now we might need more than just a data governance administrator you might need an office of people people that have certain skills like communications to assist you with these things and so the communication planning and delivering on the plan to require resources you know oftentimes organizations these days are involving their corporate communications people who are well skilled at making certain that the right message gets across in the right way to people and they help to provide the different communications options I've seen several organizations create awareness plans and awareness campaigns and Hang signs up all over the place that remind people how they should be acting when it comes to data we're changing the culture of the organization to become more data centric and to get people engaged and if everybody in the organization starts to understand that they're potentially a data steward and they have some level of responsibility again we're going to cover a greater portion of the organization if not the entire organization so I know I shared a lot of information with you today the things that I focus on the different types of data stewards within the organization what are some of the things that we can engage these people everybody in the organization in program activities engaging the stewards as a part of a working team and what do we do when we've got a large organization and people are scattered all over the place we need to address that as part of our data governance program and then how do we communicate with those people and mass to make certain that they're all on the same page so by the end of the session here I hope you know have some understanding as to why I say that everybody in the organization can be a data steward I don't know if that's the way that you act but I'm going to turn it back over to Shannon here and if we have any questions for today Bob thank you so much for another great presentation and just to answer the most and if you do have questions for Bob feel free to submit them in the bottom right hand corner of your screen in the Q&A section and I just have some most commonly asked questions just a reminder I will send a follow-up email to all registrants by end of day Monday with links to the slides the recording and all the group fabulous matrices he sent was showing there throughout the webinar no questions yet here but Bob there's a comment that came in earlier when you're talking about you know obviously that nobody you don't want to call everybody a data steward but the comment came in where ward chip roles need to be called out especially formalized recording recorded account accordingly these roles within stewardship needs to be called out based on their role and not called data storage data owners process owners data custodians platform owners etc any additional comments on that yeah I agree I agree that when it comes to the operational data stewards again the people that define and produce and use data as part of their job we don't have to call those people data data stewards their data stewards based on their relationship I do however make it a point to call out we don't necessarily change their title to data owners or to data subject matter experts but they get labeled with that they get they're recognized as being the person that we need to go to when we have a question so we can call them data owners we can call them master data stewards or things like that again it is not one size fits all for every organization but I do agree that we need to go beyond the operational data stewards those people don't need to be called data stewards but the people at the at the tactical level the owners and the in the subject matter experts we do need to label them as such and could you please hit again on the best way to recognize people for quote-unquote acting in the steward role well and so if you here's an easy way so if you shut off access to data and everybody starts screaming you're going to immediately find out who uses that data and if you ask people what they do with the data and or what the you know what data do you define or what data do you produce or what data do you use and start to catalog that information that's really the best way is to start small let's say we're starting on an initiative we're going to engage everybody focused on a specific type of data and then as we go if somebody says well we really need to involve Bill and his group because they do x y and z with the data we bring them into the fold as well so I mean we need excuse me on just asking people who does what with the data recording it somewhere so that we can then document what is the responsibility if you use data that can be can't be shared or that can't be printed or that can't be transmitted unless it's encrypted or something like that you know we need to educate these people so let's start by asking them what data they use and what data they define and produce and recording it in a common data matrix so that we can now engage the appropriate people at the appropriate time perfect and when introducing the concept of data governance and data stewardship what are some common areas of resistance you have encountered and what specific approaches have you found most useful in the effort to emphasize non-invasive methods on a department-wide effort that's a great question the first thing first response I get more often than not is that we're too busy you know we don't have time for this you know we're supposed to spend our time you know I'm already busy 150 of the time you look like you're adding work to what I'm doing well no we're not trying to add work to what you're doing we're adding to help to strengthen your relationship with the data so that's the first thing that that's the first thing that I hear is that people say I'm too busy I can't get involved and I don't have time to get involved and if you can turn it back on them and say you're already doing this it's taking you 80 you're spending your time in ways that you recognize as being inefficient and ineffective and we're going to help you to switch that around you know people say we don't have the time but if you can flip that on them and say you know what you're already doing this we want to help it would make it easier for you I consider those to be two suggestions as to how you know what type of negative response people can provide everybody's busy or they probably wouldn't have a job we can make their life easier not harder well I'm afraid that you know we always have a lot of fantastic questions and not enough time and so Bob I will get the questions over to you and thanks as always for a great and insightful webinar appreciate it and thanks to our attendees for being so engaged in everything that we do again just a reminder I will send a follow-up email by end of day Monday with links to the slides links to the recording and all the major season everything else that Bob has presented today and I will um and if you want to continue the conversation and continue chatting with Bob you can go to community.dativersity.net so thank you everybody Bob thank you again and hope you all have a great day thank you very much everybody