DataEd Slides: Getting Started with Data Stewardship

Getting Started with
Data Stewardship
Copyright 2019 by Data Blueprint Slide # !1Peter Aiken, Ph.D.
• DAMA International President 2009-2013 / 2018
• DAMA International Achievement Award 2001  
(with Dr. E. F. "Ted" Codd
• DAMA International Community Award 2005
Peter Aiken, Ph.D.
!2Copyright 2019 by Data Blueprint Slide #
• I've been doing this a long time
• My work is recognized as useful
• Associate Professor of IS (vcu.edu)
• Founder, Data Blueprint (datablueprint.com)
• DAMA International (dama.org)
• 10 books and dozens of articles
• Experienced w/ 500+ data
management practices worldwide
• Multi-year immersions
– US DoD (DISA/Army/Marines/DLA)
– Nokia
– Deutsche Bank
– Wells Fargo
– Walmart
– …
PETER AIKEN WITH JUANITA BILLINGS
FOREWORD BY JOHN BOTTEGA
MONETIZING
DATA MANAGEMENT
Unlocking the Value in Your Organization’s
Most Important Asset.

• Why?
– Definitions
– Architectural context
– Confusion abounds: IT - data - business?
– Lack of correct educational focus
– The role of strategy
• How?
– Relationship with governance
– Fire station model
– Reactive foci
– Proactive foci
• When (SDLC)
– Differing cadence
– Need for different structural approach
– Need for simplicity
– Foundational prerequisites
• Take aways ➜ Q&A
Getting Started with Data Stewardship

Data Steward Variety
https://www.healthcatalyst.com/why-are-data-stewards-so-important-for-healthcare

Definitions
• Steward
– 1. a person who looks after the passengers on a ship, aircraft, or train and brings them meals.
• synonyms: flight attendant, cabin attendant, air hostess, purser "an air steward"
• a person responsible for supplies of food to a college, club, or other institution.
– 2. an official appointed to supervise arrangements or keep order at a large public event, for ex. sporting
event.
• synonyms: official, marshal, organizer "the race stewards"
• short for shop steward.
– 3. a person employed to manage another's property, especially a large house or estate.
• synonyms: (estate) manager, agent, overseer, custodian, caretaker; historical "the steward of the estate"
• a person whose responsibility it is to take care of something."farmers pride themselves on being stewards of the countryside"
• Stewarding
– 1. (of an official) supervise arrangements or keep order at (a large public event).  
"the event was organized and stewarded properly"
– 2. manage or look after (another's property).
• Data Steward
– manage data assets on behalf of others and in the best interests of the organization (McGilvray, 2008)
– represent the interests of all stakeholders and take an enterprise perspective
– have dedicated time enough to be accountable and responsible
• Trust
– firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability, or strength of someone or something (google.com)
• Fiduciary
– involving trust, especially with regard to the relationship between a trustee and a beneficiary (google.com)
Data Steward
• Business data steward
– Manage from the perspective of business elements (i.e. business definitions  
and data quality)
• Technical data steward
– Focus on the use of data by systems and models (i.e. code operation)
• Project data steward
– Gather definitions, quality rules and issues for referral to business/technical stewards
• Domain data steward
– Manage data/metadata required across multiple business areas (i.e. customer data)
• Operational data steward
– Directly input data or instruct those who do; aid business  
stewards identifying root cause and addressing issues
• Metadata Data Steward
– Manage metadata as an asset
• Legacy Data Steward
– Manage legacy data as an asset
• Data steward auditor
– Ensures compliance with data guidance
• Data steward manager
– Planning, organizing, leading and controlling
(list adapted from Plotkin, 2014)

one who actively directs the use of  
organizational data assets in support  
of specific mission objectives
Steward
• one who actively directs
, Data
Data 
Steward
• What do data stewards do in our organization?
– Improve the organization's data assets value, and
– Advocate/evangelize for increasing the scope/rigor of
data-centric practices
– Ensure efficient/effective data management practices

The DAMA Guide to the Data Management Body of Knowledge
Data  
Management
Functions

DataManagement 
BodyofKnowledge(DMBoKV2)
Data  
Management
Functionsfrom The DAMA Guide to the Data Management Body of Knowledge 2E © 2017 by DAMA International
What is Data Governance?
Managing
Data with
Guidance

Ask anyone ...
• Would you want
your sole, non-
depletable, non-
degrading,
durable asset
managed without
guidance?
Governance and
Architecture
Example from: https://www.slideshare.net/AnthonyDehnashi/architecture-governance

Corporate Governance
• "Corporate governance - which
can be defined narrowly as the
relationship of a company to its
shareholders or, more broadly, as
its relationship to society….",  
Financial Times, 1997.
• "Corporate governance is about
promoting corporate fairness,
transparency and accountability"
James Wolfensohn, World Bank, President
Financial Times, June 1999.
• “Corporate governance deals with
the ways in which suppliers of
finance to corporations assure
themselves of getting a return on
their investment”, 
The Journal of Finance, Shleifer and Vishny, 1997.

IT Governance
• "Putting structure around how organizations align IT strategy with business
strategy, ensuring that companies stay on track to achieve their strategies and
goals, and implementing good ways to measure IT’s performance.
• It makes sure that all stakeholders’ interests  
are taken into account and that  
processes provide measurable results.
• Framework should answer some key  
questions, such as how the IT department  
is functioning overall, what key metrics  
management needs and what return IT  
is giving back to the business from the  
investment it’s making." CIO Magazine (May 2007)
IT Governance Institute, 5 areas of focus:
• Strategic Alignment
• Value Delivery
• Resource Management
• Risk Management
• Performance Measures
• "Putting structure around how organizations align IT strategy with business
strategy, ensuring that companies stay on track to achieve their strategies and
goals, and implementing good ways to measure IT’s performance.
• It makes sure that all stakeholders’ interests  
are taken into account and that  
processes provide measurable results.
• Framework should answer some key  
questions, such as how the IT department  
is functioning overall, what key metrics  
management needs and what return IT  
is giving back to the business from the  
investment it’s making." CIO Magazine (May 2007)
IT Governance Institute, 5 areas of focus:
• Strategic Alignment
• Value Delivery
• Resource Management
• Risk Management
• Performance Measures
Architecture
• Things
– (components) 
data structures
• The functions of the things
– (individually) 
sources and uses of data
• How the things interact
– (as a system, towards a goal) 
Efficiencies/effectiveness

Architectures: here, whether you like it or not
deviantart.com
• All organizations
have architectures
– Some are better
understood and
documented (and
therefore more
useful to the
organization) than
others
Data Architectures: here, whether you like it or not
deviantart.com
• All organizations
have data
architectures
– Some are better
understood and
documented (and
therefore more
useful to the
organization) than
others

Organizational 
Architectures
• Amazon
– Traditional structure
• Google
– Team of 3
• Facebook
– Do you really have
a structure?
• Microsoft
– Eliminate their own
products
• Apple
– Everything revolves
around one
individual
• Oracle
– Buys one company
after another
• Process Architecture
– Arrangement of inputs -> transformations = value -> outputs
– Typical elements: Functions, activities, workflow, events, cycles, products, procedures
• Systems Architecture
– Applications, software components, interfaces, projects
• Business Architecture
– Goals, strategies, roles, organizational structure, location(s)
• Security Architecture
– Arrangement of security controls in relation to IT Architecture
• Technical Architecture/Tarchitecture
– Relation of software capabilities/technology stack
– Structure of the technology infrastructure of an enterprise, solution or system
– Typical elements: Networks, hardware, software platforms, standards/protocols
• Data/Information Architecture
– Arrangement of data assets supporting organizational strategy
– Typical elements: specifications expressed as entities, relationships, attributes,
definitions, values, vocabularies
Typically Managed Organizational Architectures

Understanding
• A specific definition
– 'Understanding an architecture'
– Documented and articulated as a (digital) blueprint
illustrating the commonalities and  
interconnections among the  
architectural components
– Ideally the understanding  
is shared by systems and  
humans

Data/Information Architectures – Useful Definition
• Common vocabulary expressing integrated
requirements ensuring that data assets are
stored, arranged, managed, and used in
systems in support of organizational strategy
[Aiken 2010]
Confusion
• IT thinks data is a business problem
– "If they can connect to the server, then my job is done!"
• The business thinks IT is managing data adequately
– "Who else would be taking care of it?"

TheFileNamingConventionCommittee'sOutput
What do we teach knowledge workers about data?
What percentage of the deal with it daily?

• 1 course
– How to build a
new database
• What
impressions do IT
professionals get
from this
education?
– Data is a technical
skill that is needed
when developing
new databases
What do we teach IT professionals about data?
Bad Data Decisions Spiral
• =
Bad data decisions
Technical deci-
sion makers are not
data knowledgable
Business decision
makers are not
data knowledgable
Poor organizational outcomes
Poor treatment of
organizational data
assets
Poor 
quality 
data

The role of strategy
Example from: https://slideplayer.com/slide/5082003/
What is a Strategy?
• Current use derived from military
• "a pattern in a stream of decisions" [Henry Mintzberg]

Former Walmart Business Strategy
Every
Day Low
Price
Wayne Gretzky’s 
Definition of Strategy
He skates to where he  
thinks the puck will be ...

Strategy in Action: Napoleon defeats a larger enemy
• Question?
– How to I defeat the competition when their forces
are bigger than mine?
• Answer:
– Divide  
and  
conquer!
– “a pattern  
in a stream  
of decisions”
– “a pattern  
in a stream  
of decisions”
Supply Line Metadata

First Divide
Then Conquer

Complex Strategy
W
hile someone else is
shooting at you!
• First
– Hit both armies
hard at just the
right spot
• Then
– Turn right and
defeat the
Prussians
• And then
– Turn left and
defeat the British
Strategy Guides Workgroup Activities
A pattern  
in a stream  
of decisions

Strategy that winds up only on a shelf is not useful
Data 
Strategy
Data Strategy provides focus for stewardship efforts
Note: Reducing ROT increases data leverage
 
 
 
 
 
Organizational Data
Data Stewards
Technologies
Process
People
Less Data ROT ->

• Why?
– Stewardship terminology is not widely known
– We do not have agreed upon definitions
– It has become a de-facto standard
– Stewards work effectively with architectural components
– Strategy focuses steward leveraging activities
http://williamnava.com/philosophy-shaves-barber-21/
• Why?
– Definitions
• How?
– Reactive foci
– Proactive foci
• When (SDLC)

Data / Information Gap
Information 
• Overly dependent upon:
– Human-beings
– Wetwear
– Knowledge workers
– Informal communications
– Often described  
as the weakest link
Data
Put simply, organizations:
• Have little idea what data they have
• Do not know where it is (and)
• Do not know what their knowledge workers do with it

• Data stewardship happens 'pretty well' at  
the workgroup level
– Defining characteristic of a workgroup
– Without guidance, what are the chances that all  
workgroups are pulling toward the same objectives?
– Consider the time spent attempting informal practices
– Real value comes from making cross workgroup
connections work more smoothly
• Data chaff becomes sand
– Preventing smooth interoperation and exchanges
– Death by 1,000 cuts that have been difficult to account for
• Organizations and individuals lack
– Knowledge
– Skills
Workgroups get work done!
Separating the Wheat from the Chaff

Separating the Wheat from the Chaff
• Better organized data increases in value
• Poor data management practices are costing
organizations much money/time/effort
• Minimally 80% of organizational data is ROT
– Redundant
– Obsolete
– Trivial
• The question is
– Which data to eliminate?
Incomplete
Reduce-Reuse-Recycle … Data?
• Reduce the amount of organizational data ROT
– Redundant, obsolete, trivial
• Reuse the remainder
– Fewer vocabulary items to resolve
– Greater quality engineering leverage
• Integration is impossible without information architecture
components (for mapping)
– Maintenance of these components 
promotes greater reuse
• Shared data is typified by  
organizational ability to use  
information as a strategic asset
• However, assets are useless  
without knowledge of the  
asset characteristics

Data Assets Win!
Data  
Assets
Financial  
Assets
Real 
Estate Assets
Inventory
Assets
Non-
depletable
Available for
subsequent
use
Can be  
used up
Can be  
used up
Non-
degrading √ √ Can degrade 
over time
Can degrade 
over time
Durable Non-taxed √ √
Strategic
Asset √ √ √ √
• Today, data is the most powerful, yet underutilized and poorly managed
organizational asset
• Data is your
– Sole
– Non-depletable
– Non-degrading
– Durable
– Strategic
• Asset
– Data is the new oil!
– Data is the new (s)oil!
– Data is the new bacon!
• As such, data deserves:
– It's own strategy
– Attention on par with similar organizational assets
– Professional ministration to make up for past neglect
Asset: A resource controlled by the organization as a result of past events or
transactions and from which future economic benefits are expected to flow [Wikipedia]
Data Strategy in Context
Organizational 
Strategy
Data Strategy
IT Projects
Organizational Operations
Data
Governance
Data
asset support for  
organizational
strategy
What the data
assets need to do to
support strategy
How well data is
supporting strategy
Operational
feedback
How IT
supports strategy
Other
aspects of
organizational
strategy

Data Governance & Data Stewards
Data Strategy
Data
Governance
What the data
assets do to support
strategy 
How well the data
strategy is working 
(Business Goals)
(Metadata)
Data Stewards
What is the
most effective
use of steward
investments?
(Metadata)
Progress,
plans,
problems
Frameworks
• A system of ideas for
guiding analyses
• A means of organizing  
project data
• Priorities for data decision
making
• A means of assessing
progress
– Don’t put up walls until
foundation inspection is passed
– Put the roof on ASAP
• Make it all dependent upon
continued funding

A Framework For Stewardship  
from https://www.trainingjournal.com/articles/feature/stewardship
Organizational Data
Challenges
Stewardship Engine
Regulation and Policy
A Framework for Data Stewardship
Monetary
Proactive Reactive
Stewardship Activities
Address Some
Other Time
 
 
 
 
 
Strategic Consideration
Non-monetary
Value

Domain expertise is less ← | → Domain expertise is greater
Roles more formally defined ← |→ Roles less formally defined
Encountergoverneddatamoredirectly←|→Encountergoverneddatalessdirectly
Moretimeisdedicated←|→Lesstimeisdedicated
IT/Systems Development
Leadership 
(data decision makers)
Stewards 
(data trustees)
Guidance
Decisions
Participants/Experts 
(data subject matter experts)
Other Sources/Uses 
(data makers & consumers)
IT/SystemsDevelopment
Data/feedback
Changes
Action
R
esources
Ideas
Data/Feedback
Components comprising the data community

• How?
– Transform tribal knowledge-based processes to data asset leveraging
– Understand stewards transform governance into by strategy focused action
– Apply a framework to your tasks
– Understand and get good at both reactive and proactive activities
– Attempt to incorporate leadership outside of traditional channels
– Know that you cannot accomplish  
everything
https://hatrabbits.com/en/how-how-diagram/

Keep the proper focus
• Wrong question:
– How should we mange this data?
• Right question:
– Should we include this  
data item within the  
scope of our  
management  
practices?
Data and Duct Tape

• Why?
– Definitions
• How?
– Reactive foci
– Proactive foci
• When (SDLC)
 
V1 
Organizations  
without 
a formalized 
data stewards
V3 
Data Steward: Use data
to create strategic
opportunities 
V4 
Data Steward: both
Improve Operations
Innovation
The focus of data stewards should be sequenced
Only 1 is 10 organizations has a board
approved data strategy!
V2 
Data Steward: Increase
organizational efficiencies/
effectiveness
X
X

Organizational Data Usage Practices
Data Management Practices
Duplicated but ETLed Data 
(quality & transformations applied)
 
 
"Warehoused" Data
 
 
Learning/ 
Feedback
Marts
Analytics Practices
Data is not a Project
• Durable asset
– An asset that has a usable  
life more than one year
• Reasonable project  
deliverables
– 90 day increments
– Data evolution is measured in years
• Data
– Evolves - it is not created
– Significantly more stable
• Readymade data architectural components
– Prerequisite to agile development
• Only alternative is to create additional data siloes!

George Box 
British Statistician  
(1919-2013)
“All models are wrong, ...
... some are useful.”
theDataDoctrine.com
We are uncovering better ways of developing 
IT systems by doing it and helping others do it. 
Through this work we have come to value: 
Data programmes preceding software development
Stable data structures preceding stable code
Shared data preceding completed software
Data reuse preceding reusable code
 
That is, while there is value in the items on 
the right, we value the items on the left more.

Data programmes preceding software development
Common Organizational Data  
(and corresponding data needs requirements)
New Organizational
Capabilities
Systems
Development
Activities
Build
Evolve
Future State
(Version +1)
Data evolution is separate from,
external to, and precedes system
development life cycle activities!
Data management
and software
development must
be separated and
sequenced
http://www.thedatadoctrine.com

Data Strategy in Context
Organizational 
Strategy
IT Strategy
Data Strategy
Organizational 
Strategy
IT Strategy
Data Strategy
This is wrong!
Organizational 
Strategy
IT Strategy
Data Strategy

Organizational 
Strategy
IT Strategy
This is correct …
Data Strategy
• A management paradigm that views any  
manageable system as being limited in  
achieving more of its goals by a small  
number of constraints
• There is always at least one constraint, and  
TOC uses a focusing process to identify the constraint and restructure
the rest of the organization to address it
• TOC adopts the common idiom "a
chain is no stronger than its weakest
link," processes, organizations, etc.,
are vulnerable because the weakest
component can damage or break them
or at least adversely affect the outcome
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_constraints
(TOC)

Standard data
Data supply
Data literacy
Making a Better Data Governance Sandwich
Data literacy
Standard data
Data supply
Standard data
Data supply
Data literacy

Standard data
Data supply
Data literacy
This cannot happen without engineering and architecture!
Quality engineering/ 
architecture work products  
do not happen accidentally!
Standard data
Data supply
Data literacy
This cannot happen without data engineering and architecture!
Quality data engineering/ 
architecture work products  
do not happen accidentally!

• When?
– There is a fundamental mismatch between a data program and IT projects
– Objective assessments can be developed to measure and advance progress
– As scale increases so does the dependency on architecture and engineering
– Harmonizing organizational, IT and data strategies is key
– Sequencing aspects of stewardship can be helpful
http://www.fullasc.com/articles/2017/2/21/how-often-should-you-change-training-programs
IT Business
Data
Perceived State of Data

Data
Desired To Be State of Data
IT Business
The Real State of Data
Data
IT Business

Take Aways
• Need for DS is increasing
– Increase in data volume
– Lack of practice improvement
• DS is a new discipline
– Must conform to constraints
– No one best way
• DS must be driven by a data
strategy complimenting
organizational strategy
• Comparing DS frameworks can
be useful
• DS directs data management
efforts
• The language of DS is
metadata
• Process improvement can
improve DS practices
• This discipline has not had 8,000 years  
to formalize practices ➡ GAAP
• Your data is a mess and requires professional  
ministration to make up for past neglect
• Your folks don't know how to use or improve it effectively
• You likely require a new business data program
• Data strategy and data management are major data
program components, in concert, they must focus on
– Improving organizational data
– Improving the way people use data
– Improving how people use better data to support strategy
This can only be accomplished incrementally using an
iterative, approach focusing on one aspect at a time
and applying formal transformation methods
More

10 Data Stewardship Practices to Avoid
1. Buy-in but not Committing:
Business vs. IT
2. Ready, Fire, Aim
3. Trying to Solve World Hunger or
Boil the Ocean
4. The Goldilocks Syndrome
5. Committee Overload
6. Failure to Implement
7. Not Dealing with Change
Management
8. Assuming that Technology Alone
is the Answer
9. Not Building Sustainable and
Ongoing Processes
10. Ignoring “Data Shadow Systems”
Upcoming Events
October Webinar:
Data Quality Success
Stories
8 October 2019 @ 2:PM ET UTC-4
Data Architecture
Summit
Data Architecture Bootcamp
14 Oct 2019 @ 8:30 AM CT UTC-5.5
November Webinar:
Metadata Strategies
12 Nov 2019 @ 2:PM ET UTC-5 
Data Governance
Vision
Rekindling Data
Governance
9 Dec 2019 @ 8:30 PM CT UTC-5.5
 
December Webinar:
Exorcising the Seven
Deadly Data Sins
10 Dec 2019 @ 2:00 PM ET UTC-5
Sign up for webinars at: www.datablueprint.com/
webinar-schedule or at www.dataversity.net
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DataEd Slides: Getting Started with Data Stewardship

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