Data Steward Matrix

The ideal situation is to have people on staff who are experienced and knowledgeable.  And have data stewards who can do a variety of tasks effectively. 

This blog post will cover the steps to create a matrix to make sure that you have stewards in all the areas of your organization.

Data steward tasks include:

• Do business glossary definitions
• Handle data inquiries and requests
• Approve or review specifications
• Design for reports and extracts Integration
• Resolve data quality issues
• Create and define data quality rules
• Manage reference data lists
• Work on data system inventory or technical metadata
• Take care of security, access and privacy codes

It is difficult for one individual to handle technical related tasks and functional related tasks as well as having people skills.  Define data stewardship to the roles you need and what you are focusing on.  We don't encourage people to start with all these things at once.  Focus on your governance priorities and individual expertise of your data stewards.  Assign people to oversee things that there comfortable with.  If they haven’t been trained, you're not going to get a whole lot of success.  Decide on how simple or complicated you want to make your matrix.

We’re going to provide you with an example of a simple matrix and then a more detailed matrix of data stewardship areas and the tasks to create the matrix.

Simple Matrix

The simple matrix covers the functional and technical areas of each department (at a school, company or non-profit) and could look something like this:

Do the following tasks to create a complete data steward simple matrix:

• Make a list of departments
• Create simple matrix
• Determine functional steward for each department
• Determine technical data steward for each department (remember you can have the same person in multiple boxes)
• Communicate matrix to each data steward mentioned and their manager to make sure everyone agrees
• Communicate matrix to all data users

Detailed Matrix

The detailed matrix covers gets into more specifics on the technical areas that a data steward is involved in and could look something like this:

Do the following tasks for a complete detailed matrix:

• Make a list of departments
• Make a list of technical areas for each department
• Make a list of the data governance content that data stewards are involved in such as: data definitions, data inquiries / requests, specifications (reports, extracts, integrations), data quality issue resolution, data quality rules, reference data lists, data system inventory, technical metadata, security and access
• Create detailed matrix
• Determine functional steward for each department’s content area
• Determine technical data steward for each department’s content area and technical area (remember you can have the same person in multiple boxes)
• Communicate matrix to each data steward mentioned and their manager to make sure everyone agrees
• Communicate matrix to all data users

Our recommendation to really think about things in terms of roles and not just people.  People are going to come and go from their positions and come and go from your organization. Remember to have this matrix in an accessible place for the data users to access so they know who to contact.  Also remember to update this matrix as staff change.  And at least once a year review the matrix to see if adjustments need to be made.  Also feel free to review our other data steward resources located at this blog post.

IData has a solution, the Data Cookbook, that can aid the employees and the organization in its data governance (data intelligence), data stewardship and data quality initiatives. IData also has experts that can assist with data governance (data governance), reporting, integration and other technology services on an as needed basis. Feel free to contact us and let us know how we can assist.

(image credit SimpleDataStewardMatrix #1009)