Getting Started with Data Stewardship

Peter Aiken, Ph.D.
Getting Started
with Data
Stewardship
Copyright 2018 by Data Blueprint Slide # !1
• 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.
• 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
• Multi-year immersions
– US DoD (DISA/Army/Marines/DLA)
– Nokia
– Deutsche Bank
– Wells Fargo
– Walmart
– …
Copyright 2018 by Data Blueprint Slide # !2
PETER AIKEN WITH JUANITA BILLINGS
FOREWORD BY JOHN BOTTEGA
MONETIZING
DATA MANAGEMENT
Unlocking the Value in Your Organization’s
Most Important Asset.
The Case for the
Chief Data Officer
Recasting the C-Suite to Leverage
Your MostValuable Asset
Peter Aiken and
Michael Gorman

• 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
!3Copyright 2018 by Data Blueprint Slide #

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
• one who actively directs
Steward, 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
Governance
and
Architecture
Example from: https://www.slideshare.net/AnthonyDehnashi/architecture-governance

11
Copyright 2018 by Data Blueprint
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.

Definition of IT Governance
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.
• An IT governance 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, five areas of focus:
• Strategic Alignment
• Value Delivery
• Resource Management
• Risk Management
• Performance Measures
Architecture
• Things
– (components)
• The functions of the things
– (individually)
• How the things interact
– (as a system, towards a goal)

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

What do we teach IT professionals about data?
• 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
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]

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

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

Strategy Guides Workgroup Activities
A pattern  
in a stream  
of decisions
Strategy that winds up only on a shelf is not useful

Data Strategy provides focus for stewardship efforts
35
 
 
 
 
 
Organizational Data
Data Stewards
Technologies
Process
People
Note: Reducing ROT increases data leverage
Less Data ROT ->
• 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
Reduce-Reuse-Recycle … Data?

• 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 
39
• 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

Workgroups get work done!
• 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
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

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 √ √ √ √
Data Assets Win!
• 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]
Organizational 
Strategy
Data Strategy
IT Projects
Organizational Operations
Data
Governance
Data Strategy in Context
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 Strategy
Data
Governance
Data Governance & Data Stewards
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

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
48

49
Data
Data
Data
Data
Information
Fact Meaning
Request
A Model Specifying Relationships Among 3 Important Terms
[Built on definitions from Dan Appleton 1983]
Intelligence
Strategic Use
Wisdom & knowledge are  
often used synonymously
Data
Data
Data Data
50
1. Each FACT combines with one or more MEANINGS.
2. Each specific FACT and MEANING combination is referred to as a DATUM.
3. An INFORMATION is one or more DATA that are returned in response to a specific REQUEST
4. INFORMATION REUSE is enabled when one FACT is combined with more than one
MEANING.
5. INTELLIGENCE is INFORMATION associated with its STRATEGIC USES.
6. DATA/INFORMATION must formally arranged into an ARCHITECTURE.

'Enterprise Data Model' is data's general ledger
• Finance
– The general ledger holds account information  
that is needed to prepare financial statements
– Ensures common vocabulary across organization
• EDM is now more broadly defined than the traditional specific logical
data map of the enterprise
– OLD: specific model of enterprise
– NEW: wholistic knowledge and ability to use  
collective information about the organization
• Permits redefinition of success
– Increased DMM scores
– Increased granularity permits finer operational tuning
A Singular Focus
• Chief
– The head or leader of an organized body of people; 
the person highest in authority: the chief of police
• Chief Financial Officer (CFO)
– Individual possessing the knowledge, skills, and abilities to be both
the final authority and decision-maker in organizational financial
matters
• Chief Risk Officer (CRO)
– Individual possessing the knowledge, skills, and abilities makes
decisions and implements risk management
• Chief Medical Officer (CMO)
– Responsible for organizational medical matters. The organization,
and the public, has similar expectations for any of chief officer –
especially after the Sarbanes-Oxley bill.
[dictionary.com]
• Chief
– The head or leader of an organized body of people; 
the person highest in authority: the chief of police
• Chief Financial Officer (CFO) ← does not balance books
– Individual possessing the knowledge, skills, and abilities to be both
the final authority and decision-maker in organizational financial
matters
• Chief Risk Officer (CRO) ← does not test software
– Individual possessing the knowledge, skills, and abilities makes
decisions and implements risk management
• Chief Medical Officer (CMO) ← does not perform surgery
– Responsible for organizational medical matters. The organization,
and the public, has similar expectations for any of chief officer –
especially after the Sarbanes-Oxley bill.

Top
Operations
Job
Top Data Job
53
 
Top Job
 
Top  
Finance  
Job
 
Top 
IT 
Job
 
Top
Marketing
Job
 
Data Governance Organization
 
Top 
Data  
Job
• There is enough work to justify the function and not much talent
• The CDO provides significant input to the Top Information Technology Job
• 25 Percent of Large Global Organizations Will Have Appointed Chief Data Officers By 2015
Gartner press release. Gartner website (accessed May 7, 2014). January 30, 2014. http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/ id/2659215?
• By 2020, 60% of CIOs in global organizations will be supplanted by the Chief Digital Officer
(CDO) for the delivery of IT-enabled products and digital services (IDC)
Keep the proper focus
54
• Wrong question:
– Is this metadata?
• Right question:
– Should we include this  
data item within the  
scope of our  
metadata  
practices?

Data and Duct Tape
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”

57
• 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/
• 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
"59Copyright 2018 by Data Blueprint Slide #
Only 1 is 10 organizations has a board
approved data strategy!
V2 
Data Steward: Increase
organizational efficiencies/
effectiveness
X
X
Organizational Data Usage Practices
60
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 
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: 
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.

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
Mismatched railroad tracks non aligned
Copyright 2018 by Data Blueprint Slide #
!66
Data management and software development must
be separated and sequenced!

Introducing The Data Doctrine
!67
http://www.thedatadoctrine.com
Copyright 2018 by Data Blueprint Slide #
Agile Surgery

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)

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

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

IT Business
Data
As Is State of Data
To Be State of Data
IT Business
Data

79
• 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
• Why?
– Definitions
• How?
– Reactive foci
– Proactive foci
• When (SDLC)

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
More Take Aways
• 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
1. Improving organizational data
2. Improving the way people use data
3. 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
data program!business

September Webinar:
Metadata Strategies
September 11, 2018 @ 2:00 PM ET
Data Architecture Summit (DAS)
Data Architecture Bootcamp
October 8, 2018 @ 2:00 PM ET
 
October Webinar:
Data Quality Strategies: Rethinking Data Quality
October 9, 2018 @ 2:00 PM ET
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