Zeenea Effective Data Governance Framework | S02-E03 – Creating Data Awareness

This is the final episode of the second season of the Zeenea Effective Data Governance Framework series.

Divided into three parts, this second part will focus on Adaptation. This consists of : 

• Organizing your Data Office
• Building a data community  
• Creating Data Awareness

For this third and final episode of the season, we will help you use awareness support techniques that reduce the efforts needed to realize communicative tasks to make anyone aware of what the Data Governance Team is doing, get buy-in, and alignment at all levels.

At Zeenea, we advise to use the SMART framework to plan and execute the Data Awareness program.

What are SMART goals?

• Specific:  What do you want to accomplish?  Why is this goal important?  Who is involved?  What resources are involved?
• Measurable:  Are you able to track your progress?  How will you know when it’s accomplished?
• Achievable:  Is achieving this goal realistic with effort and commitment?  Do you have the resources to achieve this goal?  If not, how will you get them?
• Relevant:  Why is this goal important?  Does it seem worthwhile?  Is this the right time?  Does this match efforts/needs? 
• Timely:  When will you achieve this goal?

The “SMART” method for your data teams

If you think about the level of reach a team has, you can summarize them in 3 categories:

• The Control sphere is the one your Data Team can reach directly and interacts 
• The Influence sphere is the level where you can find sponsors and get help from
• The Concern sphere consists of the C levels who need to be informed on how things are progressing from a high level perspective.

In other words, you will have to touch all the stakeholders involved but with different means, timing and interactions.

Spend time creating nice formats, and pay attention to the form of all your artifacts.

Examples of SMART tasks 

You fill find below examples of SMART tasks:

For the Control sphere, we advise you to do the following:

• Deliver trainings (for both Data Governance teams as well as End users)
• Deliver presentations dedicated to teams (Strategy, OKRs, Roadmap, etc).
• Keep your burn-down charts and all visual management tools displayed at any time.

For the Influence sphere, we advise you to:

• Celebrate your first milestones
• Organize sprint demos
• Display OKRs teams constantly

And for the Concern sphere, we advise you to

• Celebrate the end of a project
• Organise product demos
• Record videos and make them available