Does Data Governance Confuse You? Start with these 3 simple steps.

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I’m going to begin with what’s obvious but not openly stated — Data governance is confusing to a lot and downright boring to the rest.

However, as a data leader, you will be asked about the data governance policies that are in place or need to be implemented. If you do not have an adequate response, it does not mean you are not a good leader — it means you have now joined the rest of us who are also figuring it out.

Remember this proverb —

You cannot eat an elephant whole. You need to approach it one slice at a time.

This is how you can use it to start with data governance at your organization. In fact, it’s how I started in my role as a data manager.

Catalogue your data

Before you start thinking about governance, you need to know what are the different data assets currently available at your organization. Do you know or are you informed about all the data that is present in your organization? Is the leadership team aware about it? If the answer to all these questions is no, I’d recommend to start from here.

Speak with your team, your peer managers, your administrators to collate all the data that is currently available in your data storage. While there are multiple…