S4 | Ep 19 | Data Governance by Design: Building for the Future with Phillip Dale, Head of Data Governance at Marks & Spencer

Driven by Data: The Podcast

In Episode 19, of Season 4, of Driven by Data: The Podcast, Kyle Winterbottom is joined by Phillip Dale, Head of Data Governance at Marks & Spencer, where they discuss how data governance by design is enabling them to the build for the future, which includes;

• Why the data & analytics community is the best community in the world
• Making data accessible for people to leverage it
• Why a good governance function is one of the best commercial enablers in business
• The importance of having the right controls in place
• The value of trusted data
• What data governance means for ‘the business’
• The role of DG in executing the data strategy
• How getting people to understand the benefits of good-quality data is the easy part
• Strategy versus Governance and understanding the true north
• Why you need a governance approach which keeps you fit for the future
• Why you need to show how commercial challenges of your organisation can be supported by governance
• Why keeping it simple makes things more robust and sustainable
• Why your job as a governance leader will never be done
• The challenges of being accepted by data & analytics professionals when you come “from the business”
• Choosing the right DG tooling and understanding your maturity
• Getting your tools used and minimising technical debt
• Prioritising what should be fixed and what doesn’t need to be
• Dealing with ad-hoc requests
• The importance of getting people on the same page with a unified narrative
• Why sub-par experiences and results live long in the memory
• Celebrating the governance trophies (wins)
• Why the exciting stuff is often delivered by other parts of the D&A team
• Data governance by design core principles and artefacts
• Why GenAI is a great opportunity for the governance community
• The eutopia of when organisations want governance rather than feel like they need it

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