DACO: Data Governance and Strategy

Data Governance and Strategy tests how an organization assigns decision rights and accountability for data, and how it converts business strategy into a funded, sequenced data roadmap. Expect questions that ask you to separate governance from management, place artifacts at the right level, and choose an operating model that fits the organization.

Core rules and concepts

• Governance is decision rights and accountability: who decides, who is consulted, who is accountable, and how conflicts escalate. Data management is execution: plan, build, run, control.
• Artifact hierarchy: policy (mandatory, principle-level, executive-approved, no tool names) to standard (mandatory and measurable, such as ISO 8601 dates) to procedure (mandatory steps) to guideline (recommended practice).
• Operating models: centralized, decentralized, and federated. Federated pairs domain data stewards with a central council; choose it when business units own their processes but shared definitions must be enforced.
• A data strategy traces to business strategy and states value, target operating model, funding, ownership, and a sequenced roadmap. Strategy without funding or an accountable owner is a wish list.
• Business data stewards own definitions, quality rules, and issue triage; technical stewards implement. Accountability can sit with a steward who does not perform the work.
• Measure outcomes: time to resolve data issues, percentage of critical data elements (CDEs) with an owner and an approved definition, adoption of the glossary in reporting.

Worked example

Two business units report different monthly active customer counts. A weak answer standardizes the SQL. A governance answer works the decision chain: the CDE active customer has no accountable owner and no ratified definition. Assign the Customer domain owner; the business steward drafts one definition with both units; the data governance council ratifies it; the definition is entered in the business glossary; the quality rule and report specification are derived from it; legacy reports get a dated exception with a remediation plan. Reasoning: governance fixes decision rights and definitions first, and tooling follows. The artifact chain matters: the policy already requires a single external definition, the standard carries the calculation rule, and the procedure carries change control.

Traps that cost marks

• Describing governance as managing the data rather than deciding and accounting for it.
• Choosing a fully centralized model for a diversified group without discussing trade-offs or escalation.
• Writing tool names or vendor steps into a policy.
• Presenting a glossary or council charter as the end deliverable instead of decisions and adoption.
• Treating stewardship as a committee rather than named accountable roles.