Being an Information Manager...

Governance

A lot about Data Management or Architecture is related to governance, or in other words - related to the way we decide about our priorities. So the key role in DM and Architecture is to shift the focus to data and providing structure. This is quite a major challenge, since historically the focus in IT has been on

• Functionality before data
• Project delivery before reuse
• Hardware before intangibles

And therefore the shift in governance will be hard since all our managers have grown in a culture where functionality, project delivery and infrastructure are king.

So how to make them change their minds? Here are a few ideas:

• Organise an audit with an unsatisfactory result (think Sox, or what ever is relevant for your organisation) - you can even invent your own set of rules and call this a Management System
• Show the cost of acquiring data vs the cost of applications - include all cost (man hours for handling, QC, ... etc.). The information asset has no bottom line - but through the transparency of its acquisition and handling cost it becomes clear how much value has sunk into data
• Change your architecture pictures with more focus on data & reusable components and less on the core functionality of applications
• Show clearly what you're planning to do with the money. Usually the application people have a simple cost picture: license cost + support = total sum and a simple result (now we have it installed with 5000 users ...), while data cost are harder to add up and cannot be linked to specific installations / usage. Tangible actions are easier to sell (then you can always slot in the less tangible later, once you have credibility)
• Understand what is seen as critical
• Start small and make it scalable (e.g. clean up one type of data for one department, don't plan to improve everything). if you can show in the pilot that 20% of the data was wrong and 30% of the data not retrievable, then the business will wake up (especially if it is seen as critical data)

Just a few ideas - but they are proven to help!

Labels: architecture, governance, Information Management

posted by Evert Ruijs @ 12:19 PM