Data Governance - Day 1

I'm exhausted after a long day of workshops. The first day of the Data Governance conference in San Francisco was all pre-conference tutorial sessions. It began with a great buffet breakfast that included eggs and croissants! Much more than continental. The morning tutorial that I attended was Bob Seiner's "The Stewardship Approach to Data Governance: Let's Be Practical." It was indeed, a practical approach that Bob calls the "non-invasive" approach to data governance. What I took away from this session was the idea that data governance can be accomplished without the perception of control and adding overhead. By using a common data matrix to make implicit relationships more explicit, the stewardship roles can be identified and existing decision-making structures within an organization can be leveraged to accomplish data governance.

The lunch meal was so-so. The typical conference chicken dish. However, I had the opportunity to talk with some interesting folks at our table. It was delightful to talk with a business SME who was attending a data management conference for the first time. She told me that she is interested in becoming a data management professional, and wondered if I could give her some advice about what kind of training is needed to get into this field. Good question! I told her about CDMP, but realized that somehow this isn't enough for someone new to the profession - we need to have a better answer to questions like this!

In the afternoon, I attended "Developing an Effective Culture Change Management Plan for Data Governance and Master Data Management" led by John Ladley and Pam Thomas. This contained many useful gems and tools for any change management project. The most useful tool was the survey and assessment exercise that we did in small groups at the end of the session. Although I often do this to my students, I dread doing small group work when I'm at conferences... however, this was most enlightening. Using the tools and data provided, our group was able to identify a set of change management actions for a case study project in less than 30 minutes.

The day ended with a panel of the day's presenters, led by Peter Aiken. Each presenter shared a tool, template or technique from their sessions. This was a nice way to wrap up the day, and also get some additional information about sessions I could not attend. I liked this aspect of the conference. So far, I've gained a lot of practical tools from this conference that I can apply right away in various projects that I'm working on.