Designing Data Governance | Lauren Maffeo | 518

Data Governance may not sound exciting - but it's critical! It covers how your company produces, consumes, collects, and destroys data.   So, with businesses generating and using more data than ever,  why is this role so often forgotten? Our guest today is Lauren Maffeo, Author of "Designing Data Governance from the Ground Up" and an adjunct Lecturer of Design at The George Washington University. Lauren sets the tone for us by explaining what Data Governance is and how too much data is produced for one person or even a single team to own it all.  Lauren lays out how you can create data points from subject matter experts around key areas of data your company produces or ingests, such as Sales, Marketing, and Customer Data; each of which can then have sub-sets to provide even more structure. Lauren shares why you need to understand how data works in the subject matter expert's day to day job and how data governance will help them do their job more effectively. In addition, we learn about data dictionaries and the big part they play in data governance and enablement efforts to ensure clarity is provided across domains on the exact meaning of terms that might have different meanings depending on the context. Three Key Takeaways: ·         The biggest challenge to doing data governance well is having a thought leadership strategy around it to get other colleagues on board. ·         There is too much data produced today for one person or one team to own all of it.  You need to make it a collective effort across technical and non-technical roles. ·         You can not succeed in sales, marketing, or customer success without data.