Part of The company brain: where your organization's knowledge lives
Implementing data governance: a ninety day approach
Not with a framework, but with five terms people argue about. That is how you get something that stays standing within a quarter.
Most governance programmes start with a framework and end with a spreadsheet nobody maintains. An approach that survives starts with the terms people argue about in meetings.
The order of one quarter
Five terms, one owner each, and a measurement at the end. Nothing more fits in a quarter.
In the first two weeks you write down which numbers get disputed. Not which numbers exist, but which cause arguments: revenue, margin, active customer, lead time, stock value. Five is enough.
Then you name one person as owner and one system as the source that counts, per term. That is the hardest part of the whole thing, and it is a conversation rather than a document.
In the third phase the definition lands underneath the reports, in the platform, so every report gives the same outcome without anyone copying a formula. See what is a data platform for that layer.
In the last two weeks you measure one thing: how often is one of those five numbers still disputed? That is your only real indicator.
What belongs where
Access, agreement and evidence belong in the platform. Only then does the agreement survive a change of staff.
An agreement that lives only in a document holds until the first deadline. An agreement that lives in the platform holds even when nobody is watching. So alongside the definition, record who may change it, and keep which version applied when.
Four mistakes that cost you the quarter
- Copying a framework. A model from a book describes roles you do not have.
- A steering group without an owner. Meetings do not replace decisions.
- Everything at once. Fifty terms is a programme, five is a result.
- No consequence. If a report with its own definition is allowed to survive, the agreement is optional.
See what is data governance for the roles, and what is a data contract for making a requirement on a source binding.
In short
Ninety days is enough to genuinely assign five terms. Do that well and the rest follows, because after that the organisation asks for it.
Evidence
These claims do not stand alone. They lean on our own research, which we keep updating.
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