There is a very old proverb which says that "the proof of the pudding is in the eating" and a recent experience really brought that home to me. Last year I wrote a blog explaining how pictures are very valuable communication tools. I truly believe that, but a lot of people would want to see the evidence of that, rather than just take my word for it. So I wanted to share an example which provides just that.

Just as knowing the direction of the wind is important if you are a pilot, gauging the sentiment of your organisation towards your Data Governance Programme while you are implementing it is vital.

I hope you all enjoyed your Christmas and New Year celebrations. When discussing mine with various friends I got to thinking about data (as is my wont) and I have an important question for you: Did you get what you asked for?

Moving on from fairy tales, for this blog I’m moving into the realm of ghost stories and a topical tale it is too, for this is the story of a Christmas Data Carol…

It has dawned on me that from reading my data governance tales so far, you may have the impression that I am a narrator, a teller of Data Governance stories. In this blog I want to put the record straight, for that is not at all the case and I very much have a role to play.  This blog is a tale of transformations, as initially I cast myself in the wrong role...

While researching for my Data Governance fairy story blogs, I enlisted the help of one of my god daughters and when riffling through one of her fairy tale books I came across a story for which it is easy to see the analogy with the real world activity of identifying the correct people to be Data Stewards or Data Owners. Anyone who has tried to do this knows that it is rarely an easy task. When reading the Princess and The Pea, by Hans Christian Andersen, I was struck as to how the solution to the problem is the same. It’s all a question of sensitivity….

Continuing my Data Governance Fairy Stories theme, in this blog I'm going to examine two further characters which you may have come across.  Whereas Data Fairies are helpful (but don't forget that their existence, if you believe in them, doesn't absolve you of the responsibility to understand how your data really does get from A to B), Data Goblins and Data Hobgoblins are troublesome creatures and whether you believe in them or not, they represent a very real threat to your data governance and data quality initiatives.

The feedback and response I got to my last blog got me thinking about Data Governance Fairy Stories and whether there was room for me to be to the Data Management world what the Grimm Brothers are to children's literature. I rapidly came to the conclusion that the answer was probably not, but that perhaps I could do a series of blogs on the theme.