Communication a Couple of Years

¶ … Communication

A couple of years ago I was brought on to manage the implementation of a data governance project at a small financial firm. Upper level management was concerned about the threat posed to it due to the development of new regulations largely facilitated by the financial crisis of 2008, and realized it needed greater and more lucid access to data lineage. The problem was that although a few of the executives had convinced management that a data governance project could substantially help this situation for this firm, the emergence of data governance was so new that many top executives did not know what it was.

In addition to communicating with the liaison from the firm via the traditional methods of email and telephone conversations, I made a point to arrange several meetings throughout various stages of the implementation process with upper level management to both inform them of the process required and to provide updates regarding progress. These meetings proved the most effective form of communication because it allowed my team and I direct contact with these executives, the opportunity to show them visuals related to the hierarchy of governance we were implementing, as well as specific tools and software used to implement this project.

The first couple of these meetings were the most critical because they allowed us to plan the individual stages of the project in a manner that was consistent with the level of comfort specified by the customer. A number of sources can verify the fact that the key to project management -- and perhaps the stage in which the bulk of the work is done -- is the planning stage (Haughey, 2013). My team and I therefore took the initiative to involve the customer in every aspect of the planning stage by sitting down with them and strategically going over what their needs were. This primarily consisted in determining what sort of value data provided them. Moreover, we conducted a non-invasive approach in which we emphasized that the firm already had the rudiments of data governance in place, and simply needed assistance in formalizing the management of the accountability of data since its principle need was providing a transparent method of data lineage.

This communications process of meeting regularly with upper level management proved to be successful in the long run, because we were able to address their concerns as soon as they arose, as well as keep them updated regarding our projects. Despite our efforts to plan as conscientiously for this project as we could, however, my team and I still encountered an instance or two of feature creep, "unforeseen requests for additions and changes that are outside the project scope" (Gube, 2008). According to the circumstances, these instances were actually quite understandable, as one of the top executives wanted to make a last-minute switch to a different data governance software that in theory would have still worked with the overlying hierarchy of governance we were implementing.