Catalog Renewal and Steward Mandate
Helios Industrial, a manufacturer with six business units, purchased a data catalog eighteen months ago. Of 1,400 critical data elements (CDEs), only 31% have an assigned steward, and 22% of licensed users logged in during the last quarter. The glossary contains three conflicting definitions of 'active customer'; sales, service, and finance each use their own in reporting. Stewards were appointed by unit leaders without role descriptions and spend about two hours a week on stewardship alongside full-time jobs. When the CDO asked units to adopt a single glossary, four unit heads refused, citing lost quarter-end flexibility. The catalog vendor is pressing for renewal, and the CFO wants evidence that the $400,000 annual spend is justified. The CDO must present a 12-month plan to the executive committee in three weeks.
1. Assess whether the primary problem is tooling, stewardship capacity, or mandate. Support your conclusion with the specific evidence in the setup.
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The primary problem is mandate and role design, with tooling third. Evidence: 31% steward assignment means the operating model never reached critical mass; 22% login rate suggests the catalog is not embedded in workflows; stewards have no role descriptions and two hours a week, so capacity is nominal; four unit heads openly refuse the glossary, showing the CDO lacks enforcement authority. Tooling cannot fix three conflicting definitions if no one can decide which one wins. If tooling were primary, the 22% usage would be accompanied by high steward coverage but poor features-it is not. Recommend: stop treating renewal as a tool decision. Establish an executive data council with unit-head membership, issue steward role charters with time allocation and performance objectives, and tie glossary adoption to a named business process such as quarter-end reporting. Only then renegotiate the catalog contract.
2. Recommend how to resolve the three competing definitions of 'active customer' and what to do if unit heads continue to refuse.
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Convene the three definition owners-sales, service, and finance-with the CDO as facilitator and a written decision rule: the definition used for external reporting and revenue recognition wins for enterprise reporting; unit-specific variants must be labeled as context-specific metrics, not 'active customer.' If unit heads refuse, escalate to the executive committee with a quantified impact, such as conflicting counts inflating pipeline or distorting service coverage, and ask the CFO to sponsor the enterprise definition because finance owns revenue reporting. Do not let the CDO unilaterally impose a definition; that creates compliance without adoption. Offer a transition: keep unit variants for 90 days with a mapping to the enterprise definition, then retire them. If refusal persists, document the exception and the risk owner; the governance council should decide whether to accept the risk or mandate.
3. Design a six-month scorecard to justify catalog renewal. Include at least one measure that is not tool usage.
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Six-month scorecard: (1) Steward coverage-percentage of the 1,400 CDEs with a named steward, role charter, and documented definition, target 80%; (2) Definition reuse-percentage of reports using the enterprise 'active customer' definition versus local variants, target 70%; (3) Time-to-resolution for data issues raised through stewardship, target 10 business days; (4) Catalog embeddedness-percentage of stewards who update metadata as part of a defined workflow, not as extra work; (5) Business outcome-reduction in reconciliation effort or report rework attributable to glossary conflicts. Avoid raw login counts. Present baselines and targets with owners. The CFO needs evidence of avoided cost or risk, so pair adoption metrics with one financial or control outcome.