How to govern the enterprise self-service analytics? Who makes the decisions for the process and policies? Who enforces the decisions?

In the traditional model, governance is done centrally by IT since IT handles the entire data access, ETL and dashboard development activities. In the new self-service model, a lot of business super users are involved for the data access, data preparation and development activities. The traditional top down governance model will not work anymore. However no-governance will create chaos situation. What will be needed for self-service environment is the new bottom up governance approach.

In the new self-service analytics model, since super business users do most of dashboard development, the more effective governance structure is to include representatives of those super business users.

In the picture, the blue box in the middle is the self-service analytics governing body for enterprise. It consists of both business and IT team members. The self-service analytics governing body members are self-service analytics experts & stakeholders selected by each business unit. You can think of the governing body members are the representatives of their business units or representatives of the entire self-service analytics content builder community. The charter of this governing body is as followings:

• Define roles and responsibilities between business & IT
• Develop and share self-service best practices
• Define content release or publishing process
• Define analytics support process
• Define data access, data connections and data governance process
• Define self-moderating model
• Define dashboard performance best practices
• Helps on hiring and training new self-service analytics skills
• Communicate self-service process to entire self-service content builder community and management teams
• Enforce self-service analytics policies to protect the shared enterprise self-service environment
• Make sure that self-service process and policy alignment with enterprise process and policy around data governance, architecture, business objectives, etc

Should business or IT lead the governing body? While there are times when a business-led governing body can be more effective, do not discount an IT-led governing body. There are many good reasons to consider the IT-led governing body.

• IT understands how to safely and accurately exposes an organization’s data and can standardize how data is exposed to self-service super users.
• IT has a centralized view of all analytics needs from all functions of the organization, which can help the enterprise develop streamlined, reusable processes and leading practices to help business groups be more efficient using the tool.
• IT can also centralize functions such as infrastructure, licensing, administration, and deeper level development, all which further cut down costs and mitigates risks.

What are the key skills and expectations of the head of governing body or leader of the center of excellence team? Different organizations use very different titles for this person. But the person at the helm of your of governing body or leader of the center of excellence team should have the following skills:

• The passion about self-service analytics and related technologies
• The ability to lead, set strategy, and prioritize objectives based on needs/impact
• An in-depth understanding of self-service tool, the business analytics space, and the analytics needs of the business
• The ability to align self-service analytics objectives with corporate strategy and direction
• Comfort in partnering and negotiating with both business and IT stakeholders
• A talent for navigating the organization to get things done

Please read my next blogs for roles and responsibilities