Data Governance Matters

My friend Tom Jesionowski, who sometimes writes in this space, blew my mind last fall when he drew a little picture on a whiteboard. It was a square split into four quadrants - a very simple picture. It was what he said about it that was so exciting.
I’ll try to summarize:

In the upper right quadrant he put a category of business people: Those who make decisions. You know the type: analysts, managers, executives. They need good data to make good decisions. He called this the Analyze quadrant.

In the upper left quadrant he put another category of business people: Those who are paid to act. They’re the ones out there making sales, making products, offering services, and performing the business of business. These people are involved in interactions and transactions that generate data. He called this the Act quadrant.

Below them, in the lower left quadrant, he put a category of IT people and systems: Those who collect information from the Act quadrant. He called this the Acquire quadrant.

Finally, he labeled the bottom right quadrant the Integrate quadrant. To the right of the Acquire quadrant and below the Analyze quadrant, the IT people and systems who reside here are charged with integrating collected information and making it available for analysis.

Information constantly flows counter-clockwise around these four quadrants.
***How WELL it flows, and in WHAT SHAPE, often determines the quality of decisions that business leaders can make!***

You ever see a picture that makes an idea come alive for you? That’s the way it was when I first saw Tom’s diagram.
OOOOOhhhhhh…
Right! We’re asking upper right people to make decisions, but the lower right can’t give them information in the format they need, because they didn’t get it from the lower left, who was never told to collect it in a specific format by the upper left, because the upper left either didn’t care or didn’t know about the need, because the upper left and the upper right SIMPLY WEREN’T TALKING.

OOOOOhhhhh.

So maybe the answer isn’t to beat up on our Data Warehouse team, but to get the upper right folks to put pressure on the upper left folks to build in requirements that will meet the needs of ALL 4 QUADRANTS. Yeah - that’s it.

So then Tom and I had a great, great series of conversations about why this is hard - the usual topics about power, politics, communication, consensus-building, etc.

Ever since then, I’ve been hounding Tom to publish this so I could start using his framework in discussions. I mean, how great will it be to use verbal shortcuts such as “Since this data will eventually feed analysis, let’s get some UPPER RIGHT folks involved now, in the design phase.”

So I am PLEASED and PROUD and RELIEVED to say that Tom’s framework has been published in TDAN, the great publication that’s run by old friend Bob Seiner.

You should all check it out.
Tom Jesionowski – The Prime Business Decision Loop
http://www.tdan.com/view-articles/7349