Why BOTHER with a DMMA?

Author: Howard Diesel

Date: February 13, 2023

According to the results of the Menti poll, everyone strongly agreed that we do need to bother with a DMMA.

So why do we get resistance and business support to perform a DMMA?

I accept blame for:

1. Not explaining the importance and value of the process

2. Not using the results as the driver for targeted improvements

3. Setting unrealistic targets that don’t justify the effort

I am not the only Data Management Professional who admits to these failings. Unfortunately, I don’t have any evidence for my claim.

So where should we start the self-improvement journey?

Can I start with a better definition of a DMMA than the one we find in the DMBOK?

The DMBOK defines it as:

“A method for ranking practices for handling data within an organisation to characterise the current state of data management and its impact on the organisation.“

It also defines a set of goals (why’s):

1. To comprehensively discover and evaluate critical data management activities across an organisation.

2. To educate stakeholders about concepts, principles, and practices of data management, as well as to identify their roles and responsibilities in a broader context as the creators and managers of data.

3. Establish or enhance a sustainable enterprise-wide data management program to support operational and strategic goals.

I underlined the most critical words in the goals to see if we are meeting these goals.

I can attest to achieving the following terms:

1. Discover & evaluate

2. Educate stakeholders

3. Support operational & strategic goals

I don’t believe that I have achieved these terms using a DMMA:

1. Identify their roles & responsibilities

2. Establish or Enhance a sustainable program

I typically achieve the last two goals with an Operating Model and Data Governance Assurance.

I suggest a more comprehensive DMMA definition to ensure we all understand why we should bother:

If you would like to comment about the definition, please feel free to correct me using the comments section.

I derived this function using the “Find 6 Friends” technique:

The 6 friends came from the following set of definitions gather from the internet and ChatGPT:

If you would like to join the discussion, please visit our community platform, the Data Professional Expedition.

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