Step
2
Establishing a Data Strategy
Developing a data strategy is NOT the first step in your data and analytics journey.
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The development of a data strategy takes a great deal of effort, requiring
stakeholder involvement from across your organisation. If its done properly. Our last strategy initiative involved 50+ hours of stakeholder consultation and touched on the data needs of 30 stakeholders, who represented their functions and the needs of their teams.
We spend a lot of time speaking with executives about their data capabilities. When you decide to embark on a data modernization journey, be sure to follow the 3Ds before establishing a data strategy:
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Develop an (enterprise-wide) understanding of the challenge
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Determine if the problem is big enough that the organisation would pay to solve it
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Decide if it’s something the organisation wants to solve now
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1. Develop an (enterprise-wide) understanding of the challenge
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It's easy to jump into problem solving mode, but we’re not being paid to solve problems, we’re being paid to solve the right problems.
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In order to understand if, for example, solving a data and analytics problem is the right problem for the organisation to solve, ask ten of your colleagues. Don’t simply rely on your own intuition. Regardless of how it pans out, this exercise will provide you with valuable information and help you understand how aware your colleagues are about the problem.
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Should you choose to continue, you will also have a good understanding of the colleagues that will support your initiative as you build toward action.
2. Determine if it's big enough that the organisation would pay to solve it
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Within any organisation, there are more problems to solve than the budget will allow. This means that only certain problems can be solved. Often, the ones that cause use the biggest pain or the ones that can generate the most value receive funding to solve.
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Assuming, through meetings with your colleagues, you have been able to develop a shared understanding of your data and analytics problem statement, the next step would be to understand if this is a problem we would be willing to pay to solve.
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When having this conversation we are testing to see if the problem warrants an investment and whether or not that investment is generally in line with what it needs to be. Is this a five, six or seven figure problem to solve?
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Having a rough order of magnitude helps you understand your organisation's willingness to set aside a realistic budget to solve the data challenges at hand.
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3. Decide if it’s a challenge that the organisation wants to solve now
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Now that we have a shared understanding of the problem, a willingness to allocate the required amount of budget to address it, the next step is to understand our timing.
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Even with the organisation is willing to commit budget, you need to make sure that teams are willing to commit the time.
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This may be the most challenging part of the process, but crucial to the success of your initiative.
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You have total alignment, now what?
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Now that the organisation agrees there is a data problem to tackle, that it can commit a budget and that your colleagues will be an active part of solving the problem we can move along to the next step - building your data strategy.
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