The Rosetta Stone of Data Governance

As a data governance professional, your first battle begins with people rolling their eyes at the mention of 2 words: “Data” and “Governance”. The second starts, when you try to get everyone speak the same language. Have you tried to ask someone within your team what their definition of “data” is? If you only have 3 variations, you’re winning. Most often – it’s completely different. So how do we solve it? Here’s the 5 steps that can help you.

Why is a Business Glossary Important?

In my ongoing series of demonstrating the fundamentals of implementing Data Governance in your organisation, one of the key cornerstones is to have a business glossary. A Business Glossary is a list of terms as used by different parts of the company. What this will highlight (especially to the naysayers) is how different parts of the organisation view the same item in different ways.
The best analogy I have used: the word “hello” can be said in 100s of different languages, yet it means the same thing! In essence, the Business Glossary is ensuring we all understand what we mean when we say “Hello”.

What is in a Business Glossary Structure?

Whilst the structure is completely up to you, here are a few key fields all glossaries contain:

• Term ID – It’s important to have an identifier for your term. This becomes super important when linking items together in the future. With this setup, you can also filter on Term Name (and have multiples of it) to demonstrate the volume of terms with different meanings.
• Term Name – Whilst this might seem explanatory, if you do not have a term ID field, you will need to come up with a naming convention for this field. Do yourself a favour and have a Term ID field.
• Term Definition – this is the definition of the field as outlined by the owner. What you will also want to do, is ensure that multiple areas agree with this definition. Whilst consensus can be a challenge, your goal is to harmonise everything you can and contextualise the rest.
• Term Owner – Having an owner for the term (this will come from the Roles and Responsibilities) will ensure that future discussions on its meaning or extensions can be brought to the person’s attention.
• Term Owner Taxonomy – I use the term Taxonomy for the internal company structure. As people and teams are restructured, it’s important to note where the term originated. It is also crucial that you have this list come from a central system such as HR or Finance. When it comes to ownership, my rule is to always follow the money.
• Term Alias – This is where the power of the Business Glossary comes to life as it shows all the referring terms to this one item. If you have implemented the concept of Term ID, then you can link to the Term Name, but use the hyperlink to link to the Term ID (or however you like to set it up).

How and When do you implement a Business Glossary?

Depending on where you are in your DG implementation journey, you can either document this in an internally, but company-wide list (think Intranet) or you can have it in a secured and tracked excel document on SharePoint or your choice of document repository with version history enabled.
You will also need to look at running interviews or workshops with key stakeholders. And this is why defining Roles and Responsibilities are so important.

Challenges with a Business Glossary

It’s always chicken and egg when it comes to the Fundamentals of Data Governance Implementation. One of the interesting takeaways I had from the 2024 Product Anonymous talks was,

“Is your framework for a new person or a seasoned professional?”

And this changed my approach to this entire series! My goal is to make everyone more data conscious.
We are now living in a world where the data being generated in one day is more than was created in a year a mere 10 years ago; we need people to take a moment and understand what is important to them and their stakeholders. And if you are in any way interested in data, beyond being a data governance professional, then pausing to consider the importance is key.
As such, if you’re just starting out, I highly recommend getting upskilled in DMBOK and then coming back to understand the key principles here.
If you have a basic understanding, then you need to approach the most vocal groups within your organisation to understand their pain points with the data. Once you get to the source or “the golden record” – which can be different in different situations AND based on different timestamps of the overall process, you can start on the next steps of the Data Governance journey of quality improvement.
If you’re looking to transition into this growing field, you will need to run a little self-contained experiment within your team. As part of your professional development, you can use your team meetings to document the information and show your work progressively.
If opportunities like this are not available in your workplace, I highly recommend joining a volunteer organisation and helping them implement better data controls. Heaven knows, the best way to attack a system is through the people via social engineering.

And the vast majority of people that work in volunteer organisations might not appreciate the fast-paced evolution of the digital landscape.

Conclusion

You know the what, why, where, how and when of the Business Glossary. Check back on the Index to find out more!