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A good data governance strategy entails walking, not running

This is the last post in my series on three principles for successful data governance based on an application of the W.I.N (“What’s Important Now?”) philosophy from Lou Holtz. I’ve made a resolution to focus more on “What’s Important Now” in 2010. So far this year, “What’s Important Now” is to shake off about ten pounds.

The first two principles are “Win Early” and “Credibility Matters.” Today I’m going to discuss the third principle, “Walk, Don’t Run.”

Of the three principles, this is the hardest to write about because, frankly, very few organizations have a mature, sustained, operational and proven data governance program. And any organization that has gotten to that point has probably done so by taking more than a few wrong turns.

Not that this is anybody’s fault. The simple fact of the matter is that your organization’s data governance priorities are a function of its broader business priorities (or should be, if you’ve been focusing on W.I.N.).

Business priorities shift to take advantage of emerging opportunities, to accommodate new or acquired lines-of-business or just to meet ever-increasing revenue goals. Your data governance priorities must shift with them.

In fact, the ability to shift the direction of your program and be nimble in changing conditions is the essential element of that business and political strategy that runs parallel to, sustains and protects your technology and IT strategy for data governance.

In practical terms, how do you have an ongoing data governance program that’s also reactive to changing business conditions? I look to these 4 tenets:

1.  Understand where you’ve come from – By now you’ve gotten some early wins that earn credibility for you and your team. But approach these wins objectively: there’s some good and bad in each. Document “lessons learned” from each initiative. Conduct post-mortems with your team to learn what can improve. In particular, keep your stakeholders and executive sponsors in the loop, demonstrating use of their feedback.

2. Know where you’re going - Roadmap your data governance program. That roadmap may or may not stand up to the shifting winds of your business’s priorities; it may not last an entire release cycle. That’s ok. The important thing is that you’re never at a loss for where to go next, and never at the mercy of somebody else’s “big idea.”

3. Keep what you can, change what you must - If you need to adapt your data governance policies or direction to meet new contingencies, then do so. Use the knowledge you’ve gained from previous phases to inform the next phase. Remember, your roadmap is a means, not an end. You’re not married to it.

4. Repeat – Let me say it again, “Repeat.”

As I mentioned, there are few organizations who are really at a point where they can illustrate how “Walk, Don’t Run” works. But Initiate’s been doing this for a while, as have our customers. Venerable, long-standing customers, like WellsFargo.

It’s no secret that consumer banking faced some serious shifting winds over the last couple of years. Yet, WellsFargo, more than many other big banks, seems to be doing a lot of things right, including leveraging the success of their customer data management program to facilitate business expansion.

In fact, they’ve been able to leverage Initiate, in production at Wells since 2004, to handle what amounts to a doubling of managed customer data every year.

So, when Wells picked up Wachovia last year in a distressed merger, it may have seemed like a surprise to many. But to the folks we work with at Wells, it’s just another day at the office.

“The biggest benefit is being able to [quickly] provide a single view of the customer in the operational environment,“ says Ash Lalani, Technology Manager for Enterprise Customer Services at Wells. “It enables us to better up-sell, cross-sell, and service our customers.” Especially the ones they get from grabbing market share.

It’s been a real pleasure the past few weeks blogging about Lou Holtz’s philosophy, “What’s Important Now”. But so many exciting things are happening in data governance and MDM right now, I’m itching to look into something new. Like visualization, or open data, or analytics….

Ah, the possibilities!

This post is part of a series, Data Governance: "What's Important Now?"