Practitioner's Guide to Operationalizing Data Governance

CHAPTER 11Measurement

RESULTS YOU CAN EXPECT WITHOUT MEASUREMENT

Measurement is important. If your organization is committing time and resources to a Data Governance program, you need to be committed to measuring progress. If you do not, interest will wane and you will be at risk of losing executive support over time.

WHAT MEASUREMENTS TO DEFINE

A fundamental practice in support of successful Data Governance is developing metrics that communicate the activities and value of the program. Measures should reflect the major activities (policy development, issue identification and resolution, quality improvements, and participation by involved stakeholders, etc.) ongoing in the Data Governance program. They can change over time but should promote the multifaceted value provided by formalizing Data Governance practices for a broad set of data stakeholders.

At the start of the Data Governance program, baseline metrics (where appropriate) should be collected to measure against. Things like improvements in data quality, more complete data definitions, or time to issue resolution should be tracked in order to demonstrate improvements to end users. As the program matures, you may be able to publish a Data Governance program scorecard with standard metrics that are communicated on a regular basis. This is an important means of sustaining transparency of the Data Governance program (