My 4 Must-Haves When Delivering Data Change Projects
Updated: Jul 16, 2022
Written by: Leon Gordon, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
I’ve spent the past ten years working in digital transformation, helping teams to deliver high impact data change projects. I have learned that there are certain things you need to have in place before you embark on your next project.
These are the four must-haves for anyone who is planning an organisation-wide data change project:
A Data Roadmap
A data roadmap is a high-level plan that shows how you intend to take your data from where it is today to where you want it to be in the future. It contains four key components:
Vision: A vision statement describes what purpose or goal your data will serve. This helps guide the rest of the project and ensures that everyone involved has a sense of direction.
Strategy: What are the tactics that will get us from here to there? This includes all the various steps you’ll need to take on this journey.
Action items: These are specific tasks related to each phase of your strategy, such as setting up systems, creating new processes, and training employees across teams.
Milestones/timeframes for completion: How long do we expect each action item will take? How often should we check our progress against our goals? What are some milestones along the way where we can celebrate success or course correct if things aren’t going as planned
Ownership and Accountability
Ownership and accountability are critical to success. It is important that ownership and accountability for change projects be clearly defined, shared across the organization, communicated to all stakeholders and regularly reviewed.
Transparency and Visibility
Transparency and visibility are critical for success when it comes to project management.
Transparency is about sharing information with your team and stakeholders, but what does transparency look like in a data-driven environment? It starts with the need for information sharing among teams. For example:
Developers need to be able to access data in order to build their software products that use that data as an input or output. In some cases, they may need access just on a temporary basis during testing and development phases, while in other cases developers might need ongoing access as they work on new features and enhancements (i.e., new reports).
Operations staff will also require access in order to monitor performance metrics associated with the applications that were developed by developers using this same shared data set(s). This process can become complicated quickly if multiple applications exist within one organization due to varying degrees of complexity between them (i.e., legacy versus new projects).
The right tooling to allow teams to collaborate
One of the most important aspects of delivering data change projects is collaboration. The right collaboration tools can help teams deliver more quickly, provide better quality assurance, and ensure that the work meets compliance standards.
But what are these “right” tools? There are a lot to choose from! Here's my list of must-haves:
Security: For example, Azure Active Directory (AAD) offers an intuitive approach to identity management—including user roles, permissions and access control policies—allowing you to easily manage access across multiple platforms while keeping your organization secure.
Reporting: In addition to using dashboards for real-time visibility into project progress at any time during the delivery process, many organizations also leverage reporting tools such as Microsoft Power BI for summarizing key performance indicators (KPIs) on top of their existing business intelligence (BI) capabilities or data lakes. This allows them not only to make better decisions about how they spend their resources but also makes it easier for non-technical users like business analysts who aren't able to set up queries themselves because they don't need any programming knowledge whatsoever!
When planning an organisation-wide data change project, it’s important to have these four must-haves.
When planning an organisation-wide data change project, it’s important to have these four must-haves:
A data roadmap – Understand where you want to get to and who is responsible for getting there.
Ownership and accountability – Make sure that people understand who will be driving the change and what they are accountable for.
Transparency and visibility – Ensure that everyone knows what is happening at all times. This can be done through regular meetings or dashboards displaying progress against priorities. It’s not about keeping secrets; it’s about making sure everyone understands why the project is being undertaken in the first place, how far along it is, when certain milestones have been met (or not), etc.
The right tooling to allow teams to collaborate
Conclusion
There are many challenges to consider when planning an organisation-wide data change project. You need a solid roadmap, the right tools for collaboration and transparency, and ownership and accountability. If you’re looking for more tips on how to get started with your own data change projects, check out our blog post on what you should expect from your analytics vendor.
Leon Gordon, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Leon Gordon, is a leader in data analytics. A current Microsoft Data Platform MVP based in the UK and a Partner at Pomerol Partners (pomerolpartners.com). During the last decade, he has helped organizations improve their business performance, use data more intelligently, and understand the implications of new technologies such as artificial intelligence and big data.
Leon is a Thought Leader at the Forbes Technical Council, an Executive Contributor to Brainz Magazine, a Thought Leader in Data Science for the Global AI Hub, chair for the Microsoft Power BI – UK community group and the DataDNA data visualization community as well as an international speaker and advisor.
