I am so proud to announce that the second edition of my book on Data Stewardship 2nd Edition, An Actionable Guide to Effective Data Management and Data Governance is now available. It was a lot of work, but I am very proud of the result, and hope that you find it useful.

When the first edition of my book came out in 2013, it was an up-to-date set of instructions on implementing data stewardship in a practical and repeatable manner. I am pleased to say that the book has been well-received and has provided useful guidance both to practitioners and to those considering becoming practitioners – or so I am told by people who have used the book. Needless to say, I am proud of this undertaking and I feel that the result of many months of work is better and more up-to-date guidance on the practical aspects of implementing Data Stewardship.

Much has changed over the ensuing years, and like everything else in our chosen field, the practical advice and options for implementation have changed with the environment. These changes have been driven by a focus on protecting data privacy and increasing data quality, better (and more complete) understanding of metadata, a focus on master and reference data, ever more strict data-related regulations, handling of “big data” and use of Data Lakes, and a move to the grouping of data into “data domains” with a group of business data stewards that is responsible for each data domain. These changes were the impetus for the creation of the second edition of the book, published in November of 2020.

I have learned a lot in the intervening years, and so the new version is both larger and more complete than the original edition. It includes new sections in Chapter 7 on the ever-increasing role of Data Stewards. These sections include improving the quality of metadata and “profiling” the metadata to measure that quality (including metadata quality dimensions) as well as the role of Data Stewardship in improving Metadata Quality. Process Risk Management and the evaluation of the process risk is also explored. Finally, the chapter includes a major section on capturing the data and metadata related to the enforcement of data privacy regulations. Various regulations have different requirements, of course, but not surprisingly, there is significant overlap in what must be captured and what new capabilities must be enabled. Required capabilities often include knowing what private data is captured and where it is stored and tracking requests and implementation of removal (or corrections of errors) of such private data upon request. Additional metadata is often required to implement this functionality, and this chapter discusses that as well.

Chapter 10 is a brand-new chapter that discusses implementation of Data Stewardship regarding “big data” and data lakes. This chapter describes how metadata must be collected and used when data is “ingested” into a data lake, who owns the data and can provide information about it, the roles of various groups in managing a data lake, decisions that must be made about the level of rigor for data stewardship in the data lake, and what is required to perform effective data stewardship in this environment.

Finally, Chapter 11 takes on the topic of stewarding data via “data domains.” A data domain is a grouping of data elements, and each data domain has a group of people (including Business Data Stewards that represent business functions) who are the decision-makers about the data and metadata in a data domain. Data Domains typically involve more coordination and collaboration than direct stewardship by business functions (which is also covered), and this highly collaborative environment is discussed. This chapter discusses at length and provides examples of sample data domains, the business functions that may participate, and the roles needed to effectively manage each data domain. Management of groups of data domains so that a single “data domain council” can be responsible for multiple data domains is explored – and the advantages of doing so. Various chapters in the book discuss how the makeup of certain groups (such as the Data Stewardship Council) and the processes used may change if you take this approach.

Explore more about Data Stewardship, 2^nd Edition with this complimentary chapter.

Ready to read this book?

Data Stewardship 2nd Edition, An Actionable Guide to Effective Data Management and Data Governance is available now on ScienceDirect. Or buy your own copy on the Elsevier.com bookstore and save 30% plus get free shipping when you use promo code STC30.