Activating A Strong 'Issue Management & Remediation Process' Along Your Data Governance Adoption Journey.
We've been talking about the criticality of having a governed data environment in the past few weeks. Highlighting the fact that you don't want to be left behind in the new competitive market unfolding as the world economy opens up after this pandemic. The readiness for the new market is so crucial and I think it makes sense for us to review some winning game plan of execution this week.
Now that you have decided to rightfully prioritize the need for a trusted data environment for you to thrive and continue to be relevant in the newly competitive market. You may be wondering how and where to start your Data Governance adoption journey when time is of the essence to rightfully compete in this new market.
If you're like many asking this question - where do I start and how do I recalibrate my data governance adoption for success at such a time like this? How should I position my organization for success when the health of my data is questionable to compete in the new market? You're simply not alone.
These are some of the questions I’ve been receiving lately from several clients. Not only from people who are just starting their Data Governance adoption journey, but from others who have been on this journey for several years, but seem to be struggling to gain traction due to other competing initiatives in their organizations that seem to have been pushing Data Governance adoption to the back burner.
The good news is that it's not too late for you to start the governance journey if you’re intentional about winning. You’ll need to rightfully position your execution strategy.
I highly recommend activating a solid Issues Management and Remediation Process as quickly as possible at the onset of your Data Governance adoption journey. I call this the 'Stop the bleeding' approach to your governance journey.
Activating a solid issue management and resolution will help quickly solve the immediate quality issues and provide temporal fixes around your data issues while you're working on the strategic roll-out of your holistic 'standards of care' governance activities.
There are three key advantage points of approaching governance in this manner:
1. A solid issues management and remediation process running in parallel with your data governance execution will help alleviate the pressure to downplay or skip needful foundational milestones for data Governance success and a rush to execution i.e. executing governance without a proper framework in place.
2. It will help paint a better picture and provide transparency around ongoing and critical quality issues hurting your enterprise data
3. It sets the stage for continuous monitoring of success and barometer for measuring governance effectiveness as you roll out your 'standards of care' activities for data governance. You'll be able to measure and showcase success along your governance adoption journey.
Note: I must, however, call out the fact that having a solid Issues Management & Remediation process in place must never be your ultimate strategy for creating a governed, trusted data environment. It's important to call this out as a lot of organizations fall into the trap of using this to turn their Data Management into a 'Data Fixing & Cleansing' factory. Governance can never be achieved in this manner. I call this playing 'Whac-A-Mole' game with data fixing and cleansing. Your issues never go away as this only provides temporal bandage to your data quality issues without addressing the underlining ethical issues causing poor quality data to be introduced to your ecosystem.
An effective activation and adoption of governance around your data is about building cultural transformation of stewardship and ethical behavior around your data asset along its value chain for optimal ROI. Preventing the introduction of poor-quality data into our ecosystem is at the heart of Data Governance adoption.
So, what does a solid Issue Management & Remediation lifecycle process look like?
This starts with the identification of needed roles and responsibilities to identify, track, measure, escalate, and remediate your data quality issues. Data Owners & Stewards will need to be quickly identified, engaged, and trained to manage the influx of quality issues reported daily.
Here are some guidelines for creating a solid foundation for your Issues Management & Remediation while your Data Governance Adoption is in motion:
Ensure all identified issues are reviewed, categorized, prioritized, and assigned to the appropriate team to triage.
All Issues must be assigned an owner accountable for remediating and resolving the issue and providing the status update.
Data Stewards should work with assigned issue owners and stakeholders to define the needed tasks required to remediate issues.
Issue remediation plans must be created to ensure remediation is thorough, complete, and timely.
Issues logged must be periodically reviewed from the point of identification, ownership, remediation, and closure.
There must be a defined escalation path for Issues deemed critical and unresolved by assigned owned owners in a timely manner.
There must be a remediation dashboard to monitor issues resolution progress and potential trends in issue identification and escalation.
Scorecard of reported issues must be published and distributed periodically to all data owners and relevant stakeholders.
Scorecard reports at a minimum should contain the following metrics:
o Number of Issues by Domain/Business Line/Function
o Number of Outstanding Issues
o Number of Issues Past Resolution Date
o Number of Issues by Priority.
There must be a standard-issue tracking log managed by the Data Governance team
In summary, your Issue Management and Remediation process must cover the following basic steps :
ISSUE IDENTIFICATION --> ISSUE SUBMISSION --> ISSUE VALIDATION --> ISSUE ASSIGNMENT --> ISSUE TRACKING --> COMPLETE REMEDIATION --> ISSUE CLOSURE
For more detail and practical help to activate effective Data Governance & Stewardship around your data value chain. Book a Free Call with me to discuss your challenges and we can explore simple strategies to actualize your governance success.