Why bother with Data Management Maturity Assessments?
Modelware's How-To Mature Data Training
Over the last five years, several organisations have reached out to me to assess the maturity of their Data Office. Each time I perform an assessment, I am curious as to what led to the request and the response to the results. In general, the results have been lower than I thought.
What surprises me is the response to the results. The insights about the lack of maturity should drive the appropriate decisions and actions, but they are not.
I often try to understand why I don't see the necessary change:
Did I present the insights correctly, or did I not reach the correct level of empathy?
The more time I spend with DM Maturity Assessments (DMMA), the more I am convinced that the problem is the latter. I get lots of confirmation of the current assessment (yes, yes, yes), but I am not getting the proper tactical empathy when presenting the action plan:
"Yes, that is RIGHT, let's do it!"
We require this response to see the necessary change.
What struck me in preparing the current DMMA results is that I need to spend more time thinking about why we should bother with a DMMA.
So why should we bother with a DMMA?
To answer this question, I present the following Maturity Vision and Mission statements regarding the Aim, Purpose & Objective.
We aim to assure our key stakeholders that the Data Office can support their decision-making.
The purpose of a DMMA is to describe the level of organisational alignment in terms of people, processes and tools. Greater alignment enables more collaboration and interaction between decision-makers and citizens that analyse the data. Which, in turn, produces more effective decision-making. Decisions made promptly and well lead to improved flexibility, adaptability, integration and synchronisation.
Panel on Knowledge Management
In summary, our mission command is to, through shared understanding, enable collaboration that produces effective decision-making. Effective decision-making improves business flexibility, adaptability, integration and synchronisation.
Once our DMMA Vision and mission are accepted, we must provide answers to the following questions:
Are we capable of managing data critical to business decision-making?
How talented are we?
To provide answers to the above questions, we need our review of the DMMA results to answer the following questions:
What is happening?
Why is it happening?
What should we do about it?
When will we be capable?
What don't we know?
In subsequent webinars and posts, I will present more details on using the DMMA results to answer the five questions correctly.