How do I start metadata management?

Metadata management is emerging discipline and is necessary for enterprises wishing to bolster innovation or regulatory compliance initiatives on their data assets.

Many of them are trying to establish their convictions on the subject and brainstorm solutions to meet this new challenge. As a result, metadata is increasingly being managed, alongside data, in a partitioned and siloed way that does not allow the full, enterprise-wide potential of this discipline.

1. How to successfully launch a metadata management platform
2. How do manage metadata
3. How to start metadata management

To value this “new” discipline in your organization, you need to demonstrate its ability to deliver value from its outset! At Zeenea, we offer strong data catalog support to produce value in a very short time frame, in most cases a matter of a few weeks.

In this article, we deliver an approach facilitated by a solution like Zeenea: connected, agile and agnostic about the technologies used in enterprises

Set a milestone

For each milestone, you will be asked to identify several elements:

• What are the problems: Increasing and sharing knowledge must solve a problem. It can be of various types: compliance for a scheduled audit, centralization and uniformity of a particular piece of information to satisfy a group of collaborators in a difficult situation, for example.

• What data: It is important to focus efforts on data directly related to the identified problem. Trying to deal with too large a data set will lengthen the time frame and ultimately extend the time at which the achievement of the objective, and therefore the production of value, could be measured.

• Who are my data users: On the first iteration, which may be longer than any other, the mobilized users will be structuring. They must be able to free up enough time to invest themselves in achieving the objective, but they must also have the motivation to set up metadata management in place. These users will be your first ambassadors moving forward.

• What time do I have: This iteration must be completed within a reasonably short period of time. On an enterprise-wide basis, we recommend a timeframe between 4 weeks to 3 months maximum, depending on the bandwidth of the people in charge of the subject. This duration should also help to qualify whether a particular problem is appropriate or should be subdivided, or simply discarded.

Sometimes, even before the first milestone is identified, a preliminary introspective exercise on the enterprise’s data governance maturity is carried out.

We suggest this through workshops during which the company, with the help of our maturity matrix, will be able to define its positioning. This type of exercise is of particular interest when it is carried out regularly (e.g. every year). It allows a global assessment of the benefits of deploying your governance program.

Launch the first milestone

Typically, the chronological sequence for the onboarding phase supported by our metadata management tool is the following:

Our desire is to anchor the launch in a value-producing reflex. Each iteration must bring the company tangible benefits that address your issues. This first iteration includes elements that will not appear anymore, or at least much less, in the following iterations, in particular the technical aspects related to the implementation of the solution.

We suggest by default iterations of 6 weeks. This duration, which is fairly arbitrary, corresponds relatively well to the time generally required to produce significant value while not disrupting too much the activity of the people involved. Indeed, it is necessary to keep in mind that it is rare that the mobilized collaborators have full time to deal with the subject.